This is the end.

Photo by Edward James Sczudlo

This is the end. Of a chapter. Perhaps of a book. I have come here today to submit my #vanlife resignation. What was supposed to be a one-year experiment turned out to be the gift that kept on giving, and it evolved into the most interesting, wild, weird, beauty-filled 5+ years of my life. I wouldn't trade that experience for anything, but the time has come to move on, and I do so willingly and happily. As of today, I am once again an L.A. apartment-dweller, more than six years after I left for points unknown. Endings are bittersweet, but the adventures are not over, and I am excited for this next phase of my life. My beloved van, the legendary Ashley The Beast, is currently enjoying a well-deserved siesta at my dad's place. I'll have much more to say (and many more photos and videos to share) in the days/weeks/months/years ahead, but until then I'm wishing you a happy New Year, and many new beginnings and adventures in 2021.

Love,

Brent

#ConnectedStates

Five Years

Five years. On the road. In a van. It was supposed to be twelve months. It's been half a decade. How the hell did that happen? Five years of skinny dipping in secret lakes all to myself (a few days ago). Five years of sleeping in noisy Walmart parking lots next to casinos (last night). Five years of seeing old friends and making new ones. Five years of painful good-byes. Five years of cooking on a two-burner, propane stove. Five years of mostly cold showers. Five years of hitting my head on everything. Five years of good dates. Five years of extremely bad dates. Five years of adventures. Five years of injuries. Five years of drives long enough to give me saddle sores. Five years of my van enduring things it wasn't built for. Five years of loneliness. Five years of elation. Five years of big wins. Five years of near-misses. Five years with Ashley the Beast as my home.

I didn't think I'd be writing a five-year #vanniversary post. The truth is that I was ready to be done. I was burned out on #vanlife and ready to move on. I'd put down a deposit on an apartment and was supposed to move in mid-March. But 2020 had other plans for us all, didn't it? I'll be sharing more about my decision to get back on the road in the days and weeks to come, and how this journey is changing. For now I'll just say I'm grateful. For everything. Including you. Hearts forward, friends.

-Brent
#ConnectedStates #DisconnectedStates

Inside the Mount Rushmore Protest, July 3rd, 2020

Dear friends,

It’s been nearly two years since I updated this journal. Oops? Sorry about that. A lot has happened in that time, and hopefully you’ve been following along on Instagram and Facebook. Suffice to say, I’m still on the road. Next week I will be writing a long overdue update, formally announcing a change of direction for this project. At least I think I will. In the meantime, though, here is something I wrote up for another outlet, but it was killed at the last minute, so I thought I’d publish it here. If you haven’t seen the images yet, please take a look at them over at www.instagram.com/brentdangerrose and I’ll be embedding the video here shortly as well.

Thanks for reading. More soon.

-BR
7.8.20

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Inside the Mount Rushmore Protest, July 3rd, 2020

On July 3rd, 2020, President Trump traveled to Mount Rushmore to preside over a controversial fireworks show and deliver a speech that was, even for him, remarkably divisive. I had a ticket for the event, and I drove for more than 1,350 miles to be there, but I didn’t quite make it. Instead, I stopped two miles short of my destination, where I found something more interesting going on.

Protesters were setting up on the side of SD-244, the road that leads up to Rushmore from the small tourist town of Keystone, SD. I asked one of them if they minded me sticking with them to cover what transpired. He said, “Ask Nick,” and pointed at a man wearing a red bandana as a mask. I recognized him as Nick Tilsen, and realized I’d stumbled into what I had driven two days hoping to find.

Tilsen is the President and CEO of NDN Collective, a Rapid City, SD-based organization designed to “Build the collective power of Indigenous Peoples, communities, and Nations to exercise our inherent right to self-determination, while fostering a world that is built on a foundation of justice and equity for all people and the planet.” The organization does this though a focus on building infrastructure, funding, advocacy, philanthropy, and creating movements for change.

Today, they had gathered to protest Trump’s visit to Mount Rushmore, which they view as a symbol of “repression, imperialism, white supremacy, and systemic racism that the history of this country was built on, and that is continuing to perpetuate in society today,” Tilsen told me. “So, we’re here to stand in deep solidarity with our people, and the movement for Black Lives, and all BIPOC people throughout this country. And we know that that mountain represents injustice to all of those people, too, and so our collective liberation is bound up with one another.”

This is not a new conflict. The whole region of the Black Hills is the historic land of the Lakota Nation, and not just by tradition, but by law. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 recognized the Black Hills as a part of “the Great Sioux Reservation” and was to be set aside for their exclusive use. This was broken within a decade, as the United States realized there may be gold in the Black Hills, and quickly began making greater and greater incursions, leading to more war and more treaties, which the U.S. would also violate. It wasn’t until 1980 that the U.S. Supreme Court finally admitted that the U.S. had not upheld its end of the treaty. The U.S. was ordered to pay financial restitution. The Lakota basically said, “No thanks, we want our land back.” And it’s been at that stalemate ever since.

Rushmore didn’t come along until later. The natural mountain, originally known as Six Grandfathers by the Lakota people, was a stunning granite cliff face in its own right, as well as being on land that was highly sacred. In 1927, fresh off a large-scale project for the KKK, a man named Gutzon Borglum began dynamiting and carving up Six Grandfathers at the behest of the U.S. Government. It was originally supposed to depict western pioneers as well as several prominent Native American leaders, but Borglum pushed to include the likenesses of the four American presidents you see there today, two of which were slave-holders, and all four of whom were ruinous for Native Americans. The monument has been protested since its inception.

On July 3rd, with the consent of the local authorities, the NDN Collective set up shade structures on the side of the road next to traffic heading up to the monument. A number of vehicles that drove by honked and raised fists in solidarity, but there were at least as many who raised middle fingers and shouted epithets, including, “Go home!” and “Go back to where you came from!” to which the protesters would reply, “This is our land! You go home!"

Around 4pm, NDN Collective had negotiated that they be allowed to span the four-lane highway for 15 minutes in protest. At the appointed time, the protesters poured into the street, chanting, singing, and making speeches through a megaphone. It was a powerful moment. It was also a brilliant diversion. While the authorities were watching the main gathering of protesters, others managed to slip away and park three large passenger vans end-to-end, barricading off the entire road. They quickly jacked up two of the vans and removed some of the wheels to make them more difficult to tow.

SD-244 belonged to them. The protesters, now around 150 people deep, continued to occupy the street. Late-coming Trump-supporters, trying to get up to the venue had to pull over and wait. Many assembled into a small group on the other side of the road, holding signs and waving Trump flags. One carried a sign that said “All Lives Matter” on one side, and simply read, “FUCK YOU” on the other. I spent about 20 minutes interviewing various members of that party, nearly all of whom were wearing Trump apparel.

Some members of the pro-Trump contingent acknowledged that the Native Americans had been given a raw deal and been “screwed over” in the past, but none thought that they should be required to pay for it, even though I pointed out that they still benefit from it. Some hadn’t come to protest, specifically, they just wanted to see the fireworks show and hear Trump speak, and were frustrated that they were being prevented from doing so. Other conversations devolved rather quickly. One alleged that the protesters were ANTIFA. I asked how he could tell. He said he could see the insignia on a bunch of their shirts, but then couldn’t point them out, and immediately backed off the allegation when an ACLU observer standing nearby told him there was no ANTIFA there. Others alleged that they were being paid to protest.

Unlike the protesters, not a single member of the Trump cohort of them wore masks. I asked one why he wasn’t nervous about it, and it went down the rabbit hole of COVID being “phony” but also being a bioweapon created by the Deep State at Fort Detrick at the behest of the CIA and the Rothchilds, etc. Another man in an American flag bandana was advocating for grouping up and going over to the protesters to “kick some ass.” That same man later confronted some of the protestors and shoved a young woman before the police had to restrain him.

Back on the other side of the road, things remained explicitly non-violent. I spoke to attorney Bruce Ellison who was there as an ACLU Legal Observer. He was helping to act as an intermediary between the protesters and police to ensure that things didn’t escalate into violence. He acknowledged that arrests may be made, but that the NDN Collected wanted to keep things peaceful. It was on track to remain that way until the South Dakota National Guard showed up.

Around 5:15pm, the line of local police and sheriff’s officers stood down and were replaced by a solid line of approximately 22 members of the National Guard in full riot gear. They stood shoulder to shoulder, and once the line had fully formed, they shouted “Move!” over and over, and slowly advanced on the protesters. The protesters attempted to hold their line and pushed back when the Guard pressed their riot shields into them. This briefly stopped their progress, but moments later they started chanting “Move!” again and began shoving the protesters. The third time the Guard pressed in, some shoving matches broke out, and a protester managed to grab a shield away from one of the guardsmen and use it to push back against them. Mostly, protestors used their signs to brace themselves against the shields. Several of the protestors being shoved were teenage girls.

A protester shouted through a megaphone, “This is a peaceful protest. You are the ones who are making it violent. Look at yourselves. There are children here. This is our land!” and “How many soldiers died for Putin’s bounties? How many of your brothers have died? And what is your President doing? You’re on the wrong side.” During this time I was shooting still photos with my main camera, while I wore a GoPro strapped to my chest, which I let run throughout the encounter, like a bodycam. After about 10 minutes of this incursion, the National Guard shouted orders to “fall back,” and the crowd erupted into cheers.

The respite only lasted a few minutes though. When the National Guard reformed their line they began to push into protesters more aggressively, shoving people violently with their shields and trying to force them back behind the vans. Female leaders were among the most prominent trying to hold ground and resist, but the group was forced back every time the Guard moved forward. I shouted that I was press, but the Guards continued to push forward, eventually smashing me into the side of the van, pinning me there for a few moments before I was able to slip through a gap between the vans’ bumpers.

I have seen several reports that close-range shells and pepper balls were fired at the protesters’ feet, which may have happened, but I did not see or hear any. Pepper spray, however, was used extensively, temporarily blinding several protesters and forcing them to withdraw in agony. I wasn’t an intended target but there was enough of it in the air that some got in my right eye as well as my lungs. My eye recovered in about ten minutes, but those who had been hit directly were in extreme pain for far longer, as volunteer medics and other protesters rushed to provide them water and rags.

Once the crowd had been forced to the other side of the vans a second company of National Guard arrived on the other side of the protest, effectively surrounding them. Wreckers were brought in and the three vans were towed away. Tilsen negotiated with the authorities for a half-hour reprieve to allow anybody who wanted or needed to leave to leave safely. Those who wished to remain would be arrested. Over loud speakers the police counted off the time. “This is an unlawful assembly. You have five minutes to leave the area.”

When the clock ran out, the local police rushed in on the protesters who remained and zip-tied their hands behind their backs. Nobody resisted and there was no further violence. In all, 21 people were arrested, including one minor and one counter-protestor (which I believe was the man with the “Fuck you” sign that had shoved the female protester). All were released quickly except for Tilsen who the group was surprised to learn was being charged with two more serious crimes.

After being held in jail for the weekend Tilsen appeared in magistrate court on Monday, July 6th. In addition to the misdemeanors for disorderly conduct, unlawful assembly, and impeding a highway, he is being charged with second-degree robbery (a class 4 felony) and assault. In all, he is facing up to 14 years and 30 days in prison, but was released on a $2,000 bond. I was told by Tilsen’s lawyer that the robbery and assault charge stemmed from the allegation that Tilsen had stolen a shield from a National Guard officer during the conflict.

While it is true that Tilsen held the shield for a brief period before it was returned to the guard (within 15 minutes of it being taken, though not before “landback” was spray-painted on it, which made it rather hilarious when a National Guardsman began using it again), my video footage only captured a different protester taking a shield from the guard. It’s possible that multiple shields were taken, but I only ever saw one make it into the hands of protesters, and I assumed that it was the same shield which had been passed down to Nick, though I cannot confirm this.

Some terms had been negotiated before the protest to keep things safe. I have seen the police allege that the protesters reneged on this and made things violent. This does not hold up under scrutiny and is not supported by video evidence. While the vans blocking the road were certainly not something the authorities knew was going to happen, there was absolutely no violence whatsoever until the National Guard pressed into protesters with their shields. One protester was carrying a small piece of an antler late in the day. An officer approached him and asked him to put it away because it could be considered a weapon. The man immediately complied, saying, “Of course. That’s not why we’re here. We do not want any violence.”

By the time the road was cleared of the protesters, Trump had already landed, and the highway patrol limited access to the event. Despite having a ticket (as well as press credentials), I was not allowed up the road. I didn’t want to be surrounded by so many unmasked people anyway. Instead, I made my way up a side road, parked, and then climbed a ridge so I could photograph it from a distance. A family had set up camp a short distance away from me and were watching a livestream of the event on a phone with the speaker blaring. I thought of those who were in jail as I listen to the president make incendiary remarks about protesters, and those who are fighting for justice. My jaw dropped when he stood there on Lakota land and, apropos of nothing, began to praise the “great” Andrew Jackson, the architect of the Trail of Tears, one of the most horrifying things to happen to Native Americans.

There was no joy for me in the fireworks. When they ended, I packed up and got stuck in an endless line of traffic heading back through Keystone. As we slowly drove away the sky opened up in a torrential downpour. One man stood in the street, dancing, hollering, and waving a Trump/Pence 2020 sign as cars drove by. I shot a photo of the drenched, grinning man, and thought it might be the most realistic portrait of the United States I’ve ever taken.

Three Years of Vanlife

Today is my Vanniversary. Not one, not two, but three full years on the road, in a van. It’s gone by so fast that it doesn’t feel real. I’d intended to go for a year. I’d hoped I’d make it that long. Now three? Reflexively, I want to shout, “That’s insane.”

But somehow, it doesn’t quite feel insane.

Much of the last year was spent in Los Angeles. I was in the van the whole time, but I managed to karma my way into a beautiful, peaceful, reliable parking spot in Malibu (more on that soon). But saying that I was based there still means I was there maybe thirty or forty percent of the time. That’s more time than I’d spent in any one place in years, but still, pretty transient by most peoples’ metrics.

I did a lot of drives up and down the coast, and I flew a lot of places for work, but I spent a lot of time in LA trying to sell a TV show. Came close once. Extremely close, but not quite. It may still go to another network, but as Hollywood started getting ready to close up shop for the summer (it seems Summer Break never dies in some businesses), I started getting the itch again. It was time to get moving.

A couple weeks ago I sealed my hatches, cast my dock-lines aside, and pulled out of port. I drove through Ventura, Ojai, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo. I stayed in Santa Cruz and the Bay Area for about a week, visiting family and friends, and then I started heading north without much of a plan. Today I’m in Portland. Next week, I’ll be flying to Canada to cover an event. Then the Oregon coast and Seattle and after that, it’s anybody’s guess.

Do I hang a right and start making my way to the East Coast, visiting some of the people and places from my first loop around the country? Or do I keep going straight until I hit Alaska, a place I’ve never been? Do I try to do both? I don’t know.

But let’s not get lost in the specifics here. It’s probably more interesting if I talk about the last three years in general. If I talk about the feelings, not the places.

In truth, it’s complex. There are days, many of them, when I wonder what the fuck I’m doing with my life. When I find myself asking, “How did I end up here? In this place? In this van?” Sometimes I ask that in moments of depression, but if I’m honest, there’s usually a smile on my face when I’m asking it. I wouldn’t dream of pretending that it’s all roses, but I don’t regret any of it. Any of this absurdity. Any of this uncertainty.

Actually, I think embracing the uncertainty is the key to making #Vanlife not just endurable, but also enjoyable. It’s possible that this applies to life outside of a van as well. It requires being open to all possibilities. Reacting to the world moment by moment. Adapting to dangers, pleasures, inconveniences as they come at you. Trusting your instincts and trusting that you will figure out how to deal with whatever happens, whether your initial instincts were right or wrong. It’s a constant improvisation.

All of that can be stressful. But it’s all just a ride, as Bill Hicks famously said. And when you’re able to accept that, you can handle anything. Every reality-bending kiss, every dislocated elbow, every perfect burrito, every broken heart, every personal triumph, every loved one with cancer, it’s all a part of the human experience, and if you’re reading this, CONGRATULATIONS! You’re still on the ride! Out of the infinite combinations of things that had to occur to bring you to this moment, the multitudinous combinations of sperm and eggs, somehow surviving not just infancy, but childhood, adolescence, and the last 50,000 times you crossed a street, you’re still here. You’re still experiencing life, in all its wonders and shittinesses.

These were conclusions I came to a long time before the van, back when I had a near-death experience at age 22. But the van is a good and constant reminder. I don’t think that any part of life is predictable, no matter how stable and consistent it looks on paper. The van just strips away the pretense of stability and consistency. It doesn’t pretend to know what it’s doing, that it’s making the “right” choices. We’re all just making it up as we go, it’s just a little less hidden when you’re living in a van.

So, okay. Year four begins now. Will I still be in this van July 15, 2019? I don’t know. I don’t pretend to know where I’m going to be in a month, let alone a year. It’s possible I’ll have a totally different career. Maybe I’ll have a TV show. Maybe I’ll have written a book. Or a screenplay. Maybe I’ll have an apartment. Or a house. Stranger things have happened. I’m open to it all. When I crossed the one-year mark, I had a wee existential crisis. It no longer being a “one-year project” shook me up. I wanted to find a label for it. Eventually I relaxed, decided it was okay if I didn’t know—or if I stopped pretending that I knew—and that I’d keep doing this until it stopped being fun, or until I found something that I wanted to do more.

And I’m still having fun. And I haven’t yet found something that appeals to me more. And so, I guess the only direction that matters is forward.

Thank you for all the support for the last three years. It means the world to me. See you out there.

Love,

Brent
July 15, 2018
Portland, Oregon

The Music of Thacher Island

Bon to the jour, my friends. Bon to the jour. Today, we’re stepping into the Wayback Machine all the way back to the summer of 2016. Can you remember it? Hope was in the air. Bruno Mars was on the radio. The kids all wore these crazy things called “shorts” which are like pants, but shorter. You remember. This happened back in July of that year. Ready to time travel? Here we goooo…

I was breezing through Massachusetts and I decided to swing by Gloucester, on the coast. My dear friends Eileen and Nathan live there, so I wanted to say hi. Little did I know my van would live in their driveway for the next month. Long story short, at one point Nathan said, “Hey, there’s this small island just off the coast with some lighthouses on it. I’ve been given permission to have a musicians’ retreat on the island for a few days, where we’ll all be writing music, catching lobster, testing the acoustics of the lighthouses, and generally having a good time. Would you want to come?”

This was an incredible offer, and it immediately brought in a flood of insecurities. I’ve been playing guitar since I was 18 but I probably plateaued around age 20. I added ukulele to my bag of toys about two years ago, but I don’t practice all that often so I still don’t know a ton of chords. My understanding was that Nathan was hoping I’d document the workshop, but I could participate in the music if I wanted, which, if I was going, I felt like I had to do. I hadn’t written a song in years, and I had some ideas. I knew I’d be the worst musician of the clan, easily, but I decided that somebody had to be the worst and it might as well be me, so I’ll just own it and try to not psyche myself out. Let’s do the damn thing.

When the day finally arrived we headed down to the dock. I had my guitar and uke, camera gear, mics, drone, and surfboard (just in case), and yet I seemed to have packed the lightest. The tiny boat was piled high with musical instruments, food, and whiskey, and we headed out into Cape Ann to Thacher Island.

While a small island, Thacher has two lighthouses on it: One at the north end and one at the south. These are sometimes referred to as Ann’s Eyes. Since they glow. And there are two of them. And they’re in Cape Ann. Get it? There’s a small museum on the island that gave us a history lesson. Shipwrecks with two survivors, Fresnel lenses, and an at-the-time revolutionary lighthouse technology called the Funck Moderator Float Lamp. We decided immediately that would be our band name.

Days on the island were idyllic. We’d putter out on a small dinghy, checking the lobster traps for bugs (that’s what the locals call lobsters, y’see). We’d swim in the ocean, with the water so clear we could dive down and inspect some of the traps before we even pulled them up. On the island we’d meander off on our own to pick away at the songs we wanted to work on. We’d paint the stairs of the lighthouses with Rustoleum and sing as we went. Everybody had these incredible voices, and they all knew how to harmonize. I did my best to keep up, but mostly I just listened and drank it in. I would hike around the island, looking for old relics, while trying to avoid the house-sized bushes of poison ivy.

The only constant on the island was the sound of birds. I’ve never seen so many seagulls in my life. Or heard so many. At times, it was deafening, and it was a twenty-four hour affair. Earplugs were mandatory for sleep. Not that there was a lot of that.

At night we would make the long climb up the southern lighthouse, into the room with the spinning red light. It was a 70 foot tall and very narrow spiral staircase. And yet, somehow, we lugged all of our instruments (and, in my case, cameras and microphones) up there. Most impressively, the bass player, Joe Cardoza, lugged his massive stand-up bass up and down those stairs every night.

There was something magical about those nights. And it wasn’t the whiskey. Or the tequila. It was the sound of those voices and those instruments, so high off the ground, echoing downward into the darkness and back up at us. It was the openness of the group. The support, even for me, whose playing and pipes clearly weren’t of the same caliber, was moving. We sat in the circular room at the top of the tower, illuminated only by the red, rotating light. The music that vibrated through the tower was full of passion, and deeply personal.

When our eyelids grew heavy and our throats were dry, we’d begin the long spiral back down to Earth. I was exhausted, and at least a little drunk, and all my body wanted was a bed to flop into, but the stars were calling. It isn’t often that you get a dark and fairly clear sky with something as striking as an old lighthouse for the foreground, let alone two lighthouses. So Nathan and I would venture out into the night with my camera and tripod in tow, hunting for the perfect shot.

The Milky Way wasn’t nearly as pristine as I might have hoped for. Clouds, haze, and some light pollution from the mainland made shooting tough, and editing them took me forever. In fact for almost all of them I had to do way more post-processing than I normally like to do, which makes the scenes look surreal. But all things considered, I got some shots that I really love.

This shot shows the south tower, where we would play music every night, and behind it the house where we slept. Unfortunately the haze really caught the light from the nearby towns of Gloucester and Rockport.

One shot that remains among my very favorite is this one I call Ghost House. It was one of those right place / right time things. The lighting was just so strange in that moment, looking back at the house we were all staying in. I decided to take a shot on a whim, and it turned out way cooler than I would have thought.

There were plenty of shots to be had during the day, too. A golden eagle had recently made its home on Thacher, much to the chagrin of the seagull population. We were lucky enough to see it one day, just behind the house. A few brave gulls would buzz its head, trying to scare it away. Protecting the chicks there, I’d assume. It was a stunning bird.

I also got a few shots from my drone that give a better sense of the island’s scale, and a few of the sunset, which lit up the island so perfectly.

All in all, it was an incredible few days. I did, indeed, complete my first song in years. A bluesy, silly, (sexy?,) ukulele tune. The perfect thing for a someone who’s never been able to take themselves seriously as a musician. I’d like to believe it will lead to more writing. We shall see.

The retreat culminated in a small lawn concert for a small group of friends of the island. Volunteers, mostly who live in nearby communities, who watch over the place. My friends Richard Thieriot and Chelsea Berry collaborated to write a song called Ann’s Eyes, which we all played and sang on. I recorded that one at the base of one of the lighthouse towers, along side a traditional song sung by Brian King. The recording, unfortunately, doesn’t do either song justice, but together they made a fitting soundtrack for the video I cut together from all the footage I shot there.

I don’t know why I waited so long to share this story. Or why I continue to wait to share so many others. It is what it is.

I want to thank Nathan Cohen (pictured above in the moonlight) for inviting me to step out of my comfort zone and into a place that I love. Our gracious hosts on the island were the volunteer lighthouse keepers John and Darlene Fulton.

Funck Moderator Float Lamp, from left to right, were Renee Dupuis (ukulele/melodica),Chelsea Berry (guitar/lead vocals), Brian King (guitar/lead vocals), Brent Rose (ukulele/guitar), Nathan Cohen (violin), Joe Cardoza (standup bass), and Richard Thieriot (guitar). Everybody sang.

As always, thanks for reading. See below for a few more pics.

-BR 10.14.17
On a flight from SF to Chicago

The Best Gear for #Vanlife

Hey gang,

I've been waiting to do this one for a loooong time. It took a couple years to refine my kit, and it's an ever-evolving process, but I finally did an extremely thorough piece for The Verge covering all the best gear that's keeps me living and working on the road. Check it out:

How To Live Your Best #Vanlife

Some Thoughts After Two Years of #Vanlife

I’ve been a bad storyteller. I haven’t been sharing with the class. I’ve been focused on trying to stay present. Trying to be where I am when I’m there, in the moment. But I fail at that frequently, and while failing I’m usually doing less productive, less gratifying things than updating this blog. In other words. It’s been a long time and I shouldn’t have left you, without a strong rhyme to step to. (Thanks, Rakim.)

On July 15th I hit the two-year mark of full-time #vanlife (you have the use the hashtag now, it’s mandated by Internet Law, which is a real thing that exists). I still can’t quit wrap my head around that. I find myself reflecting on how I thought this was going to be a one year thing, and now there’s no end in sight. I don’t think. Part of me wonders if I even know how to stop. If I’ve forgotten how to do it. Domesticity, I mean. If I could live in an apartment again. Travel less. Watch more TV. Learn to yodel. Is that a thing that home people do? I can’t remember anymore.

Today I started feeling like I was a housecat that wandered out one day and has continued wandering for 25 months. Somehow I survived and now I find myself near where I was, before this whole adventure started. And I wonder, if I found my way all the way back, could I ever feel at home again? Or, in those two years, have I discovered something in my nature: My inner wildcat? Could I ever be an indoor cat again?

These are the things I’m thinking about lately, and it seems that they’re what I should talk about here. Especially because I don’t even know how I’d begin to catch up on all the wheres and whens. Every time I feel like I should write an update here I start thinking about all the people/places/things that happened since the last update, I get overwhelmed, I put it off, and then the next time I think about it there’s even more. The result is that I’ve only updated this journal four times in the last year. I’m embarrassed by that. Which is another reason I’ve avoided it. Rather than continue hiding in shame, I think I’ll just say I’m sorry, and I’ll mean it, and then I’ll move on.

So what’s on my mind.

I lost four friends in the last year. Two in their mid-30s, one in her early 40s, and one at 70. All of them were too young. All of them had a spark that set them apart in this life, and it was still burning brightly in them. So, I think the moral here is this: Don’t have a spark. No, just kidding, DO! Do have a spark. Because although so many people (myself included) feel the pain of these losses, at least they lived. At least they followed their hearts, led interesting lives, and touched those around them. A life well-lived is never a tragedy, even when it ends sooner than we would like. We might wish we had more with them, much more, and we might have personal regrets about this or that, but at least their lives were worth celebrating. Parts of them, at any rate. We’re all human, after all.

I say this because it makes one take stock. It makes you ask, “How am I living my own life?” Am I where I want to be? Am I doing what I want to be doing?

The Instagram Account Manager voice in my head says that this is where I’m supposed to glorify #Vanlife. To make sure you know how awesome my life is and how You Can Do It Too! But the truth is that some of the shine is gone. In some ways I mean that literally. I lost several rather important parts off the van while bouncing along dirt roads during my monuments project, which I’ve slowly been replacing or repairing. I also mean it in the larger sense. I’m heading back to LA for a while, and the idea of looking for a new parking place every night, wondering if it’s legal, if it’s safe, if some bored neighbor with nothing better to do is going to complain, if some cop is going to knock on my door… and it makes me feel tired. When I’m on a work trip and somebody asks, “Where do you live?” sometimes I wish I had a simple answer. “City, State.” That would be nice and simple.

This is probably why I don’t have more followers. That and the lack of bikini shots. Should I take some bikini shots? Is that what you people want? Don’t tempt me…

I digress. Often.

So that’s the part that’s covered in dust and soot. But the truth is that I’m mostly still enjoying it, this weird life. There’s still a thrill in not knowing where next, or when, or what, or how. When I have to fly somewhere for work, there’s a sigh of relief when I get back to the van. I miss the feel of my mattress and the cool softness of my sheets. I love hosting my friends and making cocktails for what has become the de-facto after-after-party. I love waking up in wild places. I love always having everything I need with me (usually). I love meeting strangers and hearing their stories.

I feel so lucky. To have had the adventures that I’ve had these last couple years, to catch up with old friends and meet their kids, to have seen more of this country than I ever dreamed possible. And it is a beautiful country, even if we are having to deal with a literal Nazi invasion right now. Which… come on, I’m in a coma, right? And this is just some weird part of a morphine dream? We can’t really be dealing with Nazis, in 2017, inside our own country, right? That’s like when a TV show runs out of ideas for new bad guys and goes digging through the archives to reanimate some old corpse of a bad guy. Nazis?? Unbelievable.

When I look back at the video I made for the one-year mark of this trip, I wince a bit now when I get to the part about how we Americans have our differences but we all still ultimately want the same fundamental things. And mostly, I still believe that. But that failed to account for Nazis, who actually don’t want to live in harmony. Who actually would rather exterminate those who are different. That blindsided me, and it’s not hard to see why: I’m a straight, white, man traveling in America. Do you think my experience of #vanlife in this country would be any different if I were a brown, Muslim lesbian? I’m guessing it would.

Those of us who elect to live in vans, on the road, who do it because our jobs allow it and it’s an adventure and an “experience,” and not because poverty has forced us to live in our vehicles, we have to acknowledge our privilege. We have to be grateful for it, and we have to carry ourselves with humility, because we are the lucky ones. And those of us who have been given the gift of “influence,” I contend, have an obligation to use it for doing some good in this world. To not just show the pretty pictures and the good times so we can collect a paycheck, thus ensuring more pretty pictures, free Pringles, and good times. That kind of life is a privilege, and I contend that privilege comes with responsibility. Responsibility can be a burden, but it’s a small price to pay for the lives we enjoy, isn’t it?

That was rhetorical. It is. Anyway…

[Surreptitiously steps off soapbox.]

As I write this I’m slowly making my way back to Los Angeles, which is the city I considered home before this whole rollercoaster began. I still don’t plan much, but I have an idea that I might like to stick around for the fall, and probably the winter, and maybe the spring, still traveling some, but using it as my base of operations. Maybe. We’ll have to see what it’s like to be there now, in a van. It seems that every time I come back new street signs have gone up specifically disallowing vans and RVs. It’s that kinda thing that makes a fella feel downright unwelcome in the place he kinda sorta still thinks of as home.

Maybe I can find a parking place to rent on the west side. Anybody have some room in their driveway? I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse.

I don’t know what part I’m at within this journey. Life is like that, too. You might consider yourself middle-aged when you turn 40, but nope, sorry, you just got hit by a truck and died one week later. Turns out you were old-aged. Who knew? In a far less macabre way, it’s the same with this trip. I don’t know how much time I have left in it: Whether I’m half way, nearing the end, or who knows, maybe just getting started. All I can say is this: It feels like I’m heading into a change. I don’t know what this change will be, I just know that I can feel things starting to shift.

I will try to keep you abreast of the situation as it develops. Of the journey as it changes. I will try to share more. I will try to be more open. To be a better storyteller.

But I guarantee nothing.

Love,

Brent
9.1.17
Paso Robles, CA

A Detour Into Something Big

Dear Friends,

Sorry (again) for the long silence. Connected States is being repurposed, in a way. Or you might say I'm going to be using it for a bigger mission. I've always wanted this project to be a way of making the world (and the U.S.) a better place, and this is my attempt to do that. 

That video is a quick summary of what I'm getting myself into. You can find more information here: www.27Monuments.org

The plan is for more than 6,000 miles in less than four weeks, plus a ton of exploring, shooting, and editing. I'm worried about the sleeping thing (as it's nearly 3am while I write this and I need to hit the road first thing in the morning), but I guess I'll figure it out. 

In the meantime, please do follow along over at Instagram, and there's a Facebook page for the project as well. And if you yourself have been to any of the monuments currently under threat, please post photos of them on Instagram and use the #27Monuments hashtag. Let's spread the word and see if we can save these amazing places.

Thank you, as always, for reading. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming after July 10th... or after I've slept for a few days after that, anyway.

-Brent
June 14, 2017
Salida, CO

27Monuments.org

Chasing the California Double

The California Double (proper noun)
1.     The act of both surfing and snowboarding in a single calendar day.

There are very few places on this planet where it is possible to snowboard (or ski) and surf in a single day. Most of these places exist in California, owing to the state’s unique topography. The state has the world’s tallest mountains relative to their proximity to the ocean, with the King’s Range mountain in Northern California being the steepest rise. In other words, there are some very tall mountains very close to the coast.

I started surfing about 12 years ago and snowboarding roughly 8. This is a late start by California standards, but I grew up in the Berkeley area, which is about an hour by car to the nearest surfable beach and three or more hours to Tahoe. Further, none of my friends were really into either sport, and I didn’t really start doing either of them until I moved to Brooklyn. When I found surfing it was immediately like finding one of those missing puzzle pieces in yourself, where you say, “Oh wow, how did I not have this in my life?” Snowboarding took a few more years to warm up to, owing to the icy conditions in the Northeast and the associated painful falls. but once I did get into it I started fantasizing about doing the California Double.

There’s something about the Double that just doesn’t seem possible. The images we’re fed in pop culture are of surfers at the beach in the summer time wearing boardshorts and bikinis, or snowboarders high in the cold mountains, ripping up some powder. These places seem so far away from each other, and they seem to happen in opposite seasons, but in California, that’s just a misconception. In fact, there are places up and down the state where the two sports are only a few hours from each other (Lake Tahoe and Ocean Beach, Ventura and Mountain High, etc.)

When I first moved to Los Angeles in August 2013 I thought for sure I’d check the Double off my bucket list that first winter. I surfed once or twice a week, which was more than any period of my life up to that point, and I bought a season lift ticket for Mount Baldy, a paltry 90 minutes out of Downtown LA. But nature refused to cooperate.

It was so hot and dry that year that Baldy never accumulated enough snow to open. A year later Chevrolet approached me about a press trip where they would try for the California Double, starting with a surf at San Onofre State Beach in Orange County, and then we’d drive their new Chevy Tahoes up to Big Bear. Just a few days before the trip, however, Big Bear announced that they were closing for the season due to lack of snow. Foiled again by the drought.

I started doing the vanlife thing shortly after that, which made attempts even harder. For one, I spent a ton of time driving around the country, nowhere near the ocean. The other problem is that my van, Ashley the Beast, isn’t winterized. That means that if temps drop below freezing the hoses and tanks connected to my water system (toilet, sink, and shower) could freeze and crack, causing thousands of dollars of damage and eternal mildew hell.

Enter this winter. Tons of snow in the mountains, and warmer temperatures during the day. That meant I could probably do a day trip in the van, as long as it wasn’t too cold, and last week the conditions lined up perfectly. I was able to find $30 lift tickets for Mount Baldy on Liftopia.com for the next day, and I asked my friend Natalie if she was up for a quick mission. I picked her up at 7am on March 1st and we started heading east. We hit some traffic so decided to stop for breakfast, but even with that we were pulling in at Mount Baldy just after 10am.

Baldy certainly didn’t have a deep snowpack, and it had clearly been melting and refreezing a lot since the last time it had snowed, but the resort was virtually empty and the terrain was actually really fun. Steeper runs like Skyline were an absolute blast, though there were a few icy patches, which I found the hard way (see video).

This winter I’ve been using my first ever custom snowboard, made by Wagner Custom in Telluride, CO. I swear, this thing is magic. It’s only 158cm long, but it has a wider profile and a setback stance, which allows it to be maneuverable in tight spaces like trees but it also provides enough float to allow me to glide through powder. It had been a champ in the light fluffiness of Aspen and Park City, so I was eager to see how it would handle the crusty hardpack.

Generally it sliced through all but the most solid sections. There’s something about having a board made for you. It’s the first board I’ve had that feels like an extension of me. Because I know exactly how it’s going to behave, I don’t have to think about the details of what I’m doing as much, and I can actually express myself through the lines I carve. It’s an amazing feeling.

I honestly could have stayed out all day, but I had to be back at the beach by 5pm for a photoshoot, so we hit the road at about 2:30.

Even with afternoon traffic in LA and stopping to drop Natalie off, I was able to get to Sunset Beach by 4:45pm. The waves were very small — two-foot at best, which is especially challenging when you’re riding a smaller board (mine is a 5’ 8” Rusty DWART with Varial Foam, making it lighter and floatier than other boards its size, but still). I probably would have found better waves at the Venice Pier, but my appointment was at Sunset, so that’s where I had to go.

I paddled out with maybe a dozen other surfers, and I was able to get a handful of tiny waves. They were nothing to write home about — each waves was a closeout and just a few seconds long — but I’d been waiting for so long to complete the California Double that I was overjoyed anyway. I used the same GoPro that I used for the snow (the Hero5 Session), but when I started playing with the surf shots in Lightroom I found them to be more interesting if I made them these high-contrast, high-grain shots, almost like they came from an old, beat-up film camera.

In retrospect, I think the better way to do the California Double would be to reverse the order. Surf in the morning, at first light, when the sun is just coming up and there’s no wind, ideally on a day with a bit more size. Then jump in the car and head to the mountains. By the time you arrived the sun would have softened the snow a little, which would make it more pleasant. Then you could board all the way until last chair, grab some dinner in whatever funky little down, and make your way back to LA after the traffic dies down. At least, that’s how I’m going to try and do it next time.

As imperfect as it was, I’m still so happy to check this off my bucket list. I’m such a huge, unabashed, totally impartial fan of California, and it was a real joy to finally experience one of the unique things it has to offer.

As always, thanks for reading.

-Brent Rose
3.5.17 Malibu, CA

I Was Rescued by the People Trump Wants to Ban [Updated]

I’ve spent the last nineteen months living in a van, driving around the country, and looking for stories to tell. I’ve put more than 40,000 miles under my wheels, talked to hundreds of strangers, and taken many thousands of photos and videos. Yet I haven’t written anything about this trip since before last year’s presidential election.

I’ve accumulated a massive backlog of stories I want to tell, but it felt wrong to release them before I addressed the elephant in the room. It would have felt frivolous, and yet I struggled with how I wanted to tell this particular story. Then it just landed in my lap. Everything I am about to tell you is true and is presented without exaggeration.

I fired up my van (Ashley, The Beast) Friday, February 10th, after having not started it for a week or so. Within a few minutes some lights popped up on my dashboard. I was on my way to Berkeley for a last-minute passport renewal, and then I was supposed to drive to LA that night for a charity race in the morning, Stoked.org’s Trishredathon (snowboarding, skateboarding, and surfing). When I got back to the van from the passport office, it wouldn’t start. I called my emergency roadside service provider but there was a long wait time, so I stood by the van holding a pair of jumper cables.

Many cars saw me, made eye contact, and then drove on. These were primarily white people, which wasn’t something I really paid any attention to until two Mexican guys in a pickup truck passed me, stopped, reversed, and asked if I needed some help. We popped our hoods, attached the cables, and the van came back to life. I shook their hands and thanked them, they said they were happy to help, and they drove off.

Not wanting to waste any time, I jumped back in the van and started to head directly to my trusted mechanic, Erik, at Precision Motors in Oakland. Google said it was only 15 minutes away. Unfortunately, five minutes was all the van could give me before it completely shut off in the middle of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way — a busy, three-lane street — just before a freeway entrance. It was 4pm on a Friday. Cars were honking. I managed to make it to the far-right lane, but it was clear that my alternator wasn’t getting power to my battery, so even my hazard lights were dimming. I stood behind the van and tried to wave people around me, holding the jumper cables again, and again calling for roadside assistance.

After a few minutes, a man driving a small Toyota Matrix pulled up and asked me if I wanted a jump. I said, sure, if he thought it was possible. He pulled his car in front of mine, but there was no way to get our two batteries close enough. So, we put my van in neutral, and together we managed to push the five-ton Beast 50 feet back until it was lined up with a driveway, which he was able to reverse into. We attached the cables, and we waited for my battery to charge we started talking.

His name is Ismail and he came from Afghanistan. He has been living in California for more than 20 years. He’s married, he has four kids, and he is a devout Muslim. While we were waiting there another Muslim man, this one from Eritrea, walked up and decided to offer his opinion about what might be wrong with the van. He waited around until the van started and stayed running and then he bid us a nice night. Ismail, however, insisted that he follow me all the way to the mechanic, just to make sure I got there safely.

Our tiny caravan took off, and again, after about five minutes the van limped to a dead stop in the middle of MLK, in an even worse position than the last time. Ismail again, pulled up along-side me, and we began coupling the batteries again.

A horn started blaring behind me. It was a young white man in his mid-to-late twenties. He shouted, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” and gave me the finger. Baffled, I gestured to my popped hood and he sped into the intersection as the light turned red, nearly hitting someone making a turn. In the car directly behind him there was a young Middle-Eastern couple. I said I was really sorry for blocking them. The woman, wearing a hijab, gave me a sympathetic look and told me not to worry. The man smiled, gave me a thumbs up, and said “Good luck!”

I know this is starting to sound like a made-up liberal fable, but I swear to you on everything I have ever loved that this is 100-percent true.

I thanked Ismail again, for the tenth time, which only seemed to embarrass him. He said, “Look at it this way: I should be grateful to you, because you gave me an opportunity to help somebody.” I was so overwhelmed by this that my throat started to tighten.

Another start, another five minutes of driving, and another breakdown. This time I managed to coast into a parking lot on 29th Street in Oakland. We were only half a mile from my mechanic, but by now it was after five, and my calls were going to voicemail. I thanked Ismail again, and said that the van would be safe there until Monday, and that I would be able to jump it later. I didn’t want to take any more of his time.

“Listen,” he said. “It is part of my religion. God commands that we help each other when we can. I can’t always help people with money or anything, but it’s a Friday afternoon, I’m finished with work, and so I have plenty of time. Let’s drive to your mechanic and see if they’re still open.”

I hopped into his car. As we drove he pointed out a mosque that he used to attend. I asked him if he was worried about what is happening in the country, especially with sentiments and policies around foreigners and immigration. He said “Well, worrying never does any good, and besides, God protects us,” but then he reconsidered. “It’s like if you were going to a national park, and there are a few bears in there. I could be eaten by a bear, and that’s okay. I’d be dead, I don’t mind. But my kids… I worry that something could happen to them, and that I wouldn’t be able to protect them.”

My mechanic (also an immigrant, incidentally, but from Switzerland) was still there and said he would wait for me. Ismail and I drove back and jumped the van one last time. This time it made it all the way into the mechanic’s bay. I ran back out to thank him again. I gave him my information and asked him to please be in touch. He wanted to know how I was getting home and he said he wanted to wait so he could drive me. It took me a solid two minutes to talk him out of it. I promised him I would be okay and I thanked him over and over. We shook hands and finally said goodbye.

*****

In my time of need, the only people who stopped and helped me were the very people that our new administration seeks to keep out of the country. A pair of Mexicans and a Muslim from a “terror-prone” country. Without them I might have been stranded for hours, liable for who-knows-how-much in towing fees, and in real danger being hit by another car. They really rescued me today. Ismail, especially, put himself and his car in harm’s way to help a complete and total stranger. A white man in a white van. It didn’t matter who I was; he just saw that I was another person that needed help. I can’t help but think: Isn’t that the exact kind of behavior that we want to encourage? Isn’t that what we want to teach our kids? Isn’t that what the platonic ideal of a U.S. Citizen does? For the Christians out there, isn’t that what Jesus would do?

This project, Connected States, was designed to be apolitical. It was built on the premise that we have more similarities than differences, but that we’ve gotten too caught up in our political division to see it. Politicians certainly helped to seed the divide, the media exaggerated it, social media amplified it, and before we knew it we were doing it to ourselves, too. Dividing ourselves into camps. Preparing for war. Good vs Evil. Sane vs Out-of-Touch. Real Americans vs Fake.

I didn’t think that those differences were as stark as we as a country had been led to believe, and I set out to prove it with this project. When I met strangers in restaurants or bars or trains I very deliberately didn’t bring up politics. I would ask about their lives and their families. What were their favorite places they’d ever been, and to where did they most want to go? I asked for food recommendations and for tips on local beers, sights, bands, parks, and campgrounds. There were always a lot of laughs, and I found that if I was friendly and genuine and asked the right questions, people would open up no matter which state I was in, or whether I was in a big city or a minuscule town.

One of the few times I talked politics with strangers it instantly backfired. It was a good experiment, and it supported my hypothesis. I’d just pulled into Nashville, TN and had accidentally landed at a dive in the middle of nowhere called Santa’s Pub. It was a karaoke bar inside a trailer way out near the fairgrounds. I figured this couldn’t be where “it” was happening, so I decided to have a beer while I figured out where I actually wanted to go, but within just a few minutes a stranger came up to me because she liked my T-shirt (“I Hella Heart Oakland”), and she dragged me over to her table to meet her husband and their friends.

They were two married couples from Nebraska, just in for the weekend as a mini-vacation away from their kids and jobs. We spent the next two hours buying each other beers and laughing until our cheeks hurt. And then I started explaining the trip and how I was purposely not talking politics. They all thought it was a great idea. And then one of the guys couldn’t help himself and asked, “But just out of curiosity, which way do you vote?” I hesitated, but we were having an honest conversation, and besides, I wanted to see what would happen, so I cautiously admitted that I lean left. “Ah, that’s funny,” he said. “I guess we kind of lean right.”

And nothing was the same again. We remained civil. We pretended it wasn’t a big deal. But we only talked for another ten minutes or so, and the color of the conversation had changed. I could see them leaning back a bit more, looking at me through more skeptical eyes, and I realized that I was doing the same in return. Burgeoning friendship: ruptured. And for what reason? We were the same people we’d been for the last two hours of laughter and camaraderie, but now we viewed each other through different lenses.

All that is to say that I was convinced that for the majority of us this perceived great divide between us was imaginary. It was what we projected onto each other. And to some extent, I think there is still a lot of truth in that, but I realize now that I was naïve in allowing myself to believe I was seeing the whole picture.

* * * * *

Well, now that I’ve broken my own rule, I might as well break it all the way. I would like to talk to you, Trump voters, if any of you are still reading this. I offer my hand. I come in peace, truly.

I think I get it, why so many of you chose Trump. I think you felt ignored by our government, and I think you viewed Clinton as the status quo, which hadn’t been working for you, and you couldn’t imagine being swept under the rug by the system for another four years. Trump promised to change things, and I think desperation persuaded you to believe him. I don't believe that excuses voting for him, because so many of his stated intentions were always so fundamentally un-American and unconstitutional that any one of them should have been an automatic deal-breaker, but I think I understand, at least.

But here’s the thing: I get that you think our political system is broken. It is. I get that you see the growing gap between rich folks and poor folks and you feel like it’s impossible to get a leg up. The great majority of Americans agree. But what I don’t get is how you could believe that Donald J. Trump is the person to fix these problems.

Do you remember how you called Obama an elitist because he liked arugula lettuce and Dijon mustard? Well, you just elected a man who literally lives in a golden tower, who prides himself on not just being elite, but on being the most elite. This is the man you elected to take care of the working class. A man who put himself in that golden tower by exploiting the very workers he says he’s going to help. I’m sorry, but personally, I think you’ve been tricked by a legendarily shady conman. I think he took advantage of your desperation, and I think he exploited you to get into power. I promise I would love to be wrong, and only time will tell, but in the meantime, we as a nation, as a group of citizens, as Americans, need to come together if we’re going to try to make our country truly great.

The problem (or, one of the problems) is that we’re still caught up with who won the election, specifically whether it was “our” team or “theirs,” and that is counterproductive for all of us. You know how when you’re watching a basketball/football/hockey game and your team commits a foul, you kind of pretend that it didn’t happen or that the refs were being picky? Well, when politics become a team sport we turn a blind eye to the truth in just the same way. We decide that something isn’t true because we don’t want it to be true. Because it doesn’t line up with our side’s world view, or with our desires.

But that’s not how truth works. The truth is that while it seems that we are divided into two teams, in reality we are just one big group of people: Americans. Democrats, Republicans, Greens, and Libertarians alike should want to know about Trump’s finances and his conflicts of interest, not because it aids one team’s argument over another, but because it’s in the best interest of every single individual to make sure the government isn’t screwing them over. And the same holds true for the way we must protect our so-called American Values. Well how about this for one of our most-American values?

The poem on our Statue of Liberty reads:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Those words, written by Emma Lazarus in 1883, are the United States at its greatest, at its strongest. It says we are unafraid. We are brave enough to have an open door. So, tell me, how does that jive with banning the families of the men who helped me last week?

When you see your government acting against the very things your country stands for, it’s your responsibility to do something about it, regardless of whether or not you voted for that particular administration. I hear so many say they voted for Trump purely over economic reasons. Personally, I think his ideas are bad for the economy, but time will tell, so let’s focus on right now. I say that you, as someone who voted for this administration, have a greater responsibility to hold it accountable. It doesn’t matter if that means you find yourself in agreement with “the other side,” because if you see your government doing something that you know is wrong, it’s up to you to say something. As Trump’s constituents, your voice matters more. You have more power than the liberals who voted against him. It’s in his (and the others who were voted in) interest to keep you happy. And I know that many of you aren’t happy with some of his decisions already, because I’ve talked to a number of you who voted in hopes that he would help the economy, but disagree with a lot of the other things he’s doing.

And so when the administration attempts to ban Muslim immigrants and refugees from seven of the most desperate, war-torn countries, I want you to let them know that that’s not what you want, or why you voted for them. When they plan to spend countless billions of dollars on a wall that is nothing more than a symbolic gesture, I want you to tell them that’s not why you put them in office. When the president attempts to appoint a billionaire with no experience as the Secretary of Education, or a White Nationalist political advisor to the National Security Council in a role typically reserved for generals, you should be every bit as outraged as the liberals, because these foolish choices impact you every bit as much. When he puts a gag-order on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) you are just as at risk as Democrats. We all breathe the same air and drink the same water.

* * * * *

I’ve harped on this point a lot in these stories I’ve been telling from the road, but I’m going to repeat it because this truth keeps revealing itself to me over and over again: Our commonalities outweigh our differences by a massive margin. It doesn’t matter whether I’m talking to a white born-again Christian at an evangelical church in Texas or a brown Muslim at a Bangladeshi wedding in Michigan. We all want prosperity and opportunity. We want health and safety for our kids. We all want the United States to be great, to be a beacon, and to light the way for the rest of the world in freedom, in justice, and in the way we treat our people.

If we are going to achieve that we need to come together and look out not just for our own, but for each other as well. That was the lesson I saw so clearly again the other day, when strangers went out of their way to help me, a person who looked and talked differently from them. A person who, for all they knew, may have voted to keep their families out of the country. They put humanity first, and that is America at its greatest.

* * * * *

Ismail and I, the first of three times he jumped my van. Oakland, CA. Friday, February 10, 2017.

I honestly didn't think I'd ever hear from Ismail again, even though I'd given him my card and begged him to get in touch. He seemed so genuinely embarrassed with my gratitude that I thought he wouldn't write out of fear of me thanking him some more. Luckily, that wasn't the case. Well, he admitted to being embarrassed, but he reiterated how happy he was to help and he only wished I would have let him do more. It was a short, sweet note and I hope it's the beginning of a long friendship.

So now I've finally got all that off my chest, and I hope that will release the blockage of updates. Thank you for indulging me. In my next entry I'll resume talking about adventure, vans, and life on the road. In other words, now back to our regularly scheduled programming. 

Brent Rose
2.16.17 in Los Angeles, CA
 

UPDATE: 3.5.17

I expected, and was looking forward to, some feedback from this post, and I knew not all of it would be positive. And it wasn't. Which is alright. But then a good friend — a Muslim woman, as it would happen — reached out and said, "...your last piece, while I know it came from a very good place, was trafficking in a lot of problematic tropes and affected me in a way that I'm not sure you would understand. But as your friend, I want to help you understand. Can we set up a time to talk soon?" Of course I wanted to hear what she had to say, and upon hearing her out I felt compelled to write this update.

My friend's concern was that, primarily owing to the headline of this piece, it could seem that I'm implying "these guys should be able to stay because they are good people." That the reason that they should be allowed in the country is because they might prove to be useful. My friend knew that that wasn't what was in my heart, or what I meant, but I think her point is well-made. So let me just state this unequivocally: Their being allowed to stay in the U.S. is not an issue of "goodness," but of human rights. 

Further, she pointed me to a recent article entitled "Muslims Shouldn’t Have To Be 'Good' To Be Granted Human Rights" which was a great read and which makes the point far better than I can. I suggest you give it a read.

Going forward, I'm going to strive to do a better job with the way I present things, but I think the moral of the story is that, as a white person writing about issues that concern minorities, the best thing you can do is listen. 

Onward and upward.

-BR

Show Me the Way to Go Home

It’s time to head back home. Wherever that is. Where is that? California, I think. Los Angeles, I think. I think?

Well, even if it isn’t home in the end, it makes a good target for now. A bearing. So I’m heading that way. How?

A few weeks ago I was once again overwhelmed by the options in front of me. Paralyzed by them, really. There were so many places I hadn’t hit that I wanted to see. So many spots I wanted to see again. I was near Boston, thinking “Do I drive up through Canada, curving through Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto en route to Michigan? Or do I just make a beeline for the mitten? My Mi-Fi won’t work in Canada. It’ll add a few extra days to my journey across. Is that okay? Will I miss some opportunity if I’m not back in California by a certain date? Do I want to spend my birthday in the Bay Area? Will I stop somewhere, fly to Burning Man (can I score a ticket?), and then fly back?”

I hadn’t been moving enough. When I sit still, as it felt like I had been for a while, the walls of my scull become an echo chamber and the noise to signal ratio just gets worse and worse as I wait for some discernable insight to break through the din. Eventually you have to give up control; admit that there is no right route, or even best route. Or if there is, you’ll never know if the one you took was it or not.

Every time you’re confronted with a choice in life you make the best decision you can, attempting to choose the option you hope will lead to the greatest happiness, but you will never truly know what would have happened had you gone through the other door.

That’s a bitter pill to swallow, because we always want to know, concretely, that we made the right choice. That we didn’t screw up, make a dumb call, and lose out on more happiness, success, wealth, love than we find ourselves with at present. But we will never know. Obviously, I’m not just thinking about the trip here, but my life and the decisions I’ve made along the way, but this trip has always been (if secretly) a means for processing my life, the decisions I’ve made, the consequences they’ve wrought, and the path that lies ahead with all its infinite forks.

Where was I?

Guh, seriously Gloucester? #ConnectedStates #vanlife

See this Instagram photo by @brentdangerrose * 76 likes

I spent a ton of time in the Northeast during the early summer, using Gloucester, MA as my home base. My dear friends Eileen and Nathan live there with their baby, and they have a long, level driveway just perfect for the Beast. I became their roommate for the better part of a month.

In that time I was invited to join Nathan for a three-day songwriting retreat on Thatcher Island, a small chunk of land just off the coast of Gloucester with two picturesque lighthouses on it. Every night we’d climb to the top of the seven story lighthouses, pull out our instruments (and bottles of whiskey), and belt out a mixture of covers and originals we were working on. I was in among some top notch professional musicians, and I felt very much out of my depth as I switched between my guitar and ukulele, but they were generous and made me feel welcome. I even finished my first new song in several years. Maybe I’ll record it, #VanJamz style.

From there I shot off to Maine. I’d never been and I wanted to see Acadia National Park. It was as stunning as it had been alleged, but man it was crowded. Acadia is tiny park compared to Yosemite or Yellowstone, but the tourists love it in summertime. It was tough to take a photo without a dozen other people in my shot. I found myself scrambling down damp cliff faces by the ocean to try and get a little solitude.

Okay, I made it to #BarHarbor. Where should I go and what should I do? Know any cool people here? Lemme know! #ConnectedStates #vanlife #projectvanlife #vanlifers #homeiswhereyouparkit #vansofinstagram #urbancamping #maine

See this Instagram photo by @brentdangerrose * 52 likes

I spent nights in Bar Harbor, which was beautiful and quaint, but it had to be the whitest place I’ve ever seen in my life. I was uncomfortable with the lack of diversity and found myself constantly wondering, “Jeez, guys, what’d you do with all the black people?” Also, as it turns out, overnighting in an RV is not permitted in town. I got away with it on night one, but around midnight of night two I got a knock on my door for the second time on this trip. It was an elderly cop cut from the same cloth as Andy Taylor. I’d answered the door in my underwear and he seemed so thrown and uncomfortable that he just told me to move along and park by the local ball field. Yessir, officer.

The third night was pretty special. It had been overcast since I’d arrived in Maine. Some plans with a friend of a friend had fallen through so I was just wandering around Bar Harbor when I looked up and there was a miraculous hole in the clouds. I ran back to the van and hightailed it up to the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia. I was rewarded with a few hours of pristine Milky Way shots (my favorite is below). I passed out in the van for a couple hours and then woke up to shoot a timelapse of the sunrise (Cadillac is the first place the rising sun touches the U.S.).

Reach out and touch something. #connectedstates #milkyway #nightsky Sometimes plans don't work out the way you want them to. Sometimes things fall through. Sometimes that affords you and opportunity to rest, relax, and rechargea. Or, sometimes, it means that you get a few hours of clear night skies, and you stay up until 2:30am taking photos on top of a mountain. This shot was taken on the top of #CadillacMountain in #acadianationalpark, #maine with my #sonyalpha #sonya7s. #milkywaychasers #vanlife #projectvanlife #vanlifers #homeiswhereyouparkit #vansofinstagram #photography #longexposure

See this Instagram photo by @brentdangerrose * 167 likes

From there it was back down to Boston for my brother’s Star Wars themed wedding / family reunion. After that, after sitting around paralyzed by indecision for a couple days, I decided to head to Canada, and once I was on that path a series of reunions ensued. First up was Katie and Michael who I’d worked with doing Bay Area theatre back when I was 19 (and then again at 22). Katie remains my favorite director I’ve worked with, and it was wonderful to meet the little humans they’d created together.

Then onto Montreal, where I stayed for two days, eating my face off. The first night I was there I found myself at a bar that was showing the Olympics. My bartender and I were chatting and I asked her if she knew a good place for me to park for the night. She consulted another bartender (whom I hadn’t even spoken with yet), who walked over, wrote down her address on a piece of paper and said I could park in the lot behind her apartment. Incredible trust from a total stranger. I stashed the van there then jumped on one of Montreal’s bikeshare bikes (called Bixi), and proceeded to weave around the city in search of poutine (not a euphemism). My phone died and I realized I’d forgotten the address where I left the van, so I just zigzagged back and forth along the beautiful streets until I found it again. It was a great night.

After that it was on to Ottawa to see my old friend Alexa and her family (it had been eight years), Toronto to see my friend Kaitlin (also eight years) and then back down to Traverse City, Michigan. TC was where I first felt like this trip found its stride and I was eager to see the friends I’d made a year ago, Brett, Holly, and Jen. It’s wild to see the changes that go by in just one year.

Found myself a sweet, sneaky place to spend the night. #connectedstates is dipping its toes into Lake Superior this morning then heading West. #vanlife #vanlifers #projectvanlife #homeiswhereyouparkit #vansofinstagram #lighthouse #lakesuperior

See this Instagram photo by @brentdangerrose * 83 likes

From there I blazed through the Upper Peninsula and then over to Stillwater, MN where my superfriends Dylan and Sheila were attending a wedding. From there, it was on to North Dakota. I’d opted to do South Dakota a year ago and fell in love with the Badlands, but I was curious about Theodore Roosevelt National Park a couple hundred miles to the north, so I made it a point to get there this time, and man I’m glad I did.

One of my favorite photos I've ever taken.

Like its brother to the south, Roosevelt National Park is full of badlands. Incredible, eerie, steep terrain with many colorful layers of soft rock and clay. But compared to the stark and arid Badlands NP, Roosevelt is far more lush. The badlands are topped with tall grass. There are trees, forests, and rivers. There are herds of wild horses and bison. The park is divided two: South Station and North Station.

I spent my first night in South Station and was rewarded with some incredible views. I found a pretty wonderful place to park, too. North Station, though, is what really captured my heart. It’s about half an hour further from the interstate and that seems to have kept the number of tourists far lower. There was more of a feeling of desolation there, and I loved it.

Maybe the best 20 seconds of video I've ever shot. Happened upon this wild stallion taking an afternoon dirt bath in the #Badlands of North Dakota. Took my breath away. #connectedstates #WyldStallynsRule #billandted #wildhorses #couldntdragmeaway #nature #horse #horses #Sony alpha #sonya7s #vanlife #theodoreroosevelt #nationalpark #nationalparks #theodorerooseveltnationalpark #northdakota

See this Instagram video by @brentdangerrose * 126 likes

That night I attempted to hike the North Achenbach Trail (“aching back trail?”) in hopes of getting some milky way shots. It was a steep, sketchy hike and I kept loosing the trail as I ventured further down into the canyon. My plan was to hike down to the river, pull out my sleeping bag and pad, and then sleep under the stars. I had plenty of food and a pump to filter water. I finally found the more defined part of the trail and was making good progress. I was following little reflectors on wooden posts that appear once every 100 yards or so. I’d just past one and I could see two ahead that seemed to be right next to each other. I remember wondering why they’d put two marker so close together, and then it turned its head, and the markers disappeared.

It was a cat. It was a very big cat. This cougar (mountain lion) looked back at me and its eyes lit up in my headlamp’s beam once more. I could feel every hair on my body stand on end. It started stalking back and forth. I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to run away, because cats love chasing things. So I decided to make myself big and slowly big away. But first, I realized I wanted to take a picture of it. Because I am an idiot. I would have to change lenses. My other lens was in my backpack. My hand was shaking, but I managed to make the switch. I did not manage, however, to get a good shot because I didn’t have the wherewithal to better adjust my settings. The best I got was this video:

So, I just had a too close encounter with a mountain lion. I was hiking alone, just after midnight, trying to get some long exposures in the Badlands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park (North Station). I was having a great night, was getting some good shots, and I was probably two miles (maybe three) into the wilderness when my headlamp caught these eyes. There would be no sleeping under the stars tonight. I just told the full story on my #Snapchat, so I'd recommend heading over there and checking it out. My handle there is @maybebrent. I fully admit that I was scared. My heart is still racing... #connectedstates #mountainlion #nationalpark #wilderness #scary

See this Instagram video by @brentdangerrose * 65 likes

I made it back out of the canyon unmauled (plans of sleeping under the stars had been quickly abandoned). I made myself a strong Old Fashioned and then passed out in a van. I was woken early in the morning by a ranger telling me I wasn’t allowed to overnight there. I explained the situation to him and he was very understanding.

From there I headed north to Watford City, ND and met with Nick Ybarra, who has been maintaining the legendary Maah Daah Hey trail for the last four years and organizing bike (and now foot) races there. The MDH was a 100 mile long singletrack course through some very wild terrain, but now it’s been extended to 150 miles. Nick was the first to bike the whole thing in a single day, which is madness.

Maah Daah Hey trail, North Dakota

I pulled my Montague Swissbike X90 folding mountain bike out of my trunk and did the first 11 or so miles of it with Nick. It was pretty technical stuff and rough. Very rough (and I was rusty). But the views were just incredible. It zips along side badlands and over plateaus and grass covered buttes. We inadvertently ended up herding a large group of cattle out grazing.  By the time I was done my forearms were absolutely throbbing from gripping my handlebars so tightly. I couldn’t believe someone could do 100 miles of it in a day, let alone 150. Nick said he’s about to start offering a six day trip, though. 25 miles each day and camping in between. Sounds much more manageable and it’s definitely been added to my bucket list. Hopefully 2017…

Some legit Montana shit. #connectedstates #montana

See this Instagram photo by @brentdangerrose * 83 likes

After North Dakota it was time to hit Montana again, this time Bozeman, a place I’d missed on my first time through. I’d assumed the Bozeman was much like Billings (i.e. lots of ugly cement buildings everywhere), but I was surprised at how charming and quaint it was. I met a nice lady on Tinder who agreed to meet me for dinner, and then she and her roommate showed me the town for the next two days.  The highlight was a concert out of town and a place called Pine Creek Lodge. It felt like very authentic Montana.

Pink giraffe. Because pink giraffe.

The next day I hopped a flight to California, spent 18 hours shopping and packing, and jumped in my friend Glenn’s van and headed off to Burning Man. This would be my fourth burn, but my four had been spread out every three or four years since 2005. This year I’d written an article for Outside Mag about the best gear for camping at Burning Man, and I was getting to try everything out to make sure it lived up. The Shift Pod, the Exped mattress, the Goal Zero Yeti charger, they all worked fantastically.

My first few days at the burn were tough, though, and I found myself doing a lot of processing. I realized that this was going to be my “What the fuck am I doing with my life?” burn. I felt adrift and out of sync with the whole scene there. Come Thursday, though, I was able to relax into the not knowing, open up, and have a good time. It was bitter medicine, but it was what I needed.

What I didn’t need, though, was a sprained MCL, which I received on my left knee, during a limbo contest at Burning Man. See, I haven’t lost a limbo context in something like 23 years (damn you, Nitza’s baht mitzvah!), so there’s pride on the line. It’s also really fun to see people’s reactions because I’m tall and in my mid-30s and people don’t expect me to come in and snatch souls. Anyway, this time there was this one guy and he was really good, and he pushed me lower than maybe I’ve ever gone. I almost made it but juuuust tipped backwards at the last moment. As I was going down I made the mistake of letting my knee relax inward, it hyper extended, and I basically couldn’t walk the next day.

So, I'm back from #BurningMan slightly worse for wear. Here's the story: I haven't lost a limbo contest in something like 23 years. It's always been my weird, utterly useless superpower. So Friday somehow a limbo line breaks out at a party and I couldn't help myself. There was this one other guy there who was really, really good. I ended up going lower than I've had to go in years (well below the knee). This was the final height and we both failed to make it under, so we tied for first. And damnit look HOW CLOSE I was. (Thanks to @macniv for shooting this critical moment) But as I was tipping backwards I let my leg relax, and when I fell it hyper extended inwards and I felt a pop. Could barely walk the next day, and I'm pretty sure it's either an MCL or medial meniscus injury. So bummed, as I was finally injury-free and getting myself back into running shape. There's a silver lining, though. I'd basically reconciled with the fact that I was just going to limp around our camp for the rest of my time at Burning Man and that would be it. But on the night of the burn homegirl Vanessa knew of a rickshaw bike at her camp, and uber-homie @practice_makes_max volunteered to pedal me around all night (no small task in that rough, patchy dirt). And so I ended up getting to go out, see all the cool things on fire, chill on the legendary Dodo Bus for its final ride, and see all my friends. Basically, when you have amazing friends, who needs knees? #connectedstates #limbo #howlowcanyougo #apparentlynotquitethatlow #burningman2016

See this Instagram video by @brentdangerrose * 87 likes

The next day was the day of the burn, too, which is kind of the culmination as far as partying goes. I was in a good headspace by that point, though, and I was happy hanging around our camp of loveable misfits (Camp Glenn Jones!) with whoever happened to be around. Our friend Vanessa knew of a rickshaw bike at her camp, though, and my longtime bestie Max said he’d pedal me around the desert.

It was the coldest night of the week, and I sat in the back of this rickshaw bundled up in a blanket, while Max was sweating in a t-shirt in front of me. I probably looked like a Make-A-Wish kid, but it allowed me to see the sights, meet up with friends, and have a great time. There really is nothing better than friendship.

Speaking of. Upon returned to my van in Montana I was joined by my dear friend Kathryn who’d flown from NYC to meet me. What followed was one of the most joyful legs of the entire journey. We laughed as we drove and dove deep into the murky waters of our lives. We hit one of the world’s greatest dive bars in Missoula and passed out near the co-op.

In 1999 I traveled to London to meet some friends and bum around Western Europe. While traveling in France the previous week Kathryn and her sister Maren had met a girl named Jennie and they all started traveling together. We only saw Jennie one more time--and just briefly--the next year. Flash forward 17 years and we picked up right where we left off. Except in Idaho. The last few months has been an amazing string of reunions, but this was one of the sweetest. #connectedstates #vanlife #betterwithage

See this Instagram photo by @brentdangerrose * 129 likes

The next day contained one of the best reunions yet. When I was 19 I was bumming around Western Europe and I met up with Kathryn and her sister Maren (also my good friend) in London. They’d just come from France and had met a girl around the same age, and they’d decided to travel together. This was Jennie. She’d come to the Bay Area a year later, and we’d seen her briefly, but neither of us had seen her since. Sixteen years later, thanks to Facebook, we were suddenly showing up at her doorstep.

One of the things I’ve experienced over and over again with these reunions is that when you pick the right people to be friends with it doesn’t really matter how much time has elapsed since you last saw them: You just fall right back into it as if you’d seen them last week. Sure, there’s more catching up and feeling in details, but if the connection you initially had was real, it’ll feel just the same as it did a decade and a half ago, and that’s what happened here.

Kathryn and I ended up spending two wonderful days with Jennie in Moscow, Idaho before we moved on to Portland to see other friends, catch up with them, and feel again that no time had passed. Kathryn had brought her harmonium with her, partially through my misunderstanding just how big a harmonium was, and we made use of it. As I drove she would play and we’d sing. I introduced her to the song Butterfly Nets by Bishop Allen, which we decided to record before we hugged goodbye.

Friendship + music + van = happiness. @kathryncorinne asked if I'd like her to bring her harmonium, which I confused with a melodica, which is quite small. So when she arrived with this monster of the thing I realized it was clearly time for the LONG overdue second installment of #VanJamz. We decided to go with Butterfly Nets by Bishop Allen. This is the musical equivalent of #nofilter. I didn't clean up the audio beyond a couple tiny volume adjustments. No reverb. Just pure van soundz, baby. The full video is on my YouTube channel: brentrosevideo or you can click the link in my bio. #connectedstates #vanlife #projectvanlife #homeiswhereyouparkit #music #cover #bishopallen #vanlifers

See this Instagram video by @brentdangerrose * 91 likes

I drove down to Eugene, spending the evening with more friends I’d met a year ago when I came through. Reunions and reunions and reunions. The next night I pulled into the driveway of my mom’s house. That’s where it’ll live for the next few weeks while I let my MCL heal and figure out my next moves. And I still don’t know what those will be, exactly.

Today is September 15th. Which is my birthday, and it’s also the 14 month mark of this journey. I’m writing this on a plane to Colorado. I have a three-day press trip there with a two-day trip to Tahoe immediately following it. After that, the plan is to relax in the Bay, make some repairs to the van (replacing a window or two), make a couple videos, and get a ton of work done. After that, it’s looking like LA.

It’s funny, the original seed for this whole experiment was me going through a breakup two years ago and trying to figure out how I wanted to live my life. That’s when the concept of living in a van first emerged, but I was just thinking I’d live in it in LA and do short trips to visit friends in nearby cities. That was before the idea of the year-long road trip. Before I thought about documenting the trip. Before it became Connected States, in other words.

So there’s part of me that’s excited to try it. See what it feels like to spend most of the fall and winter in southern California. Push forward with trying to make some TV stuff happen. Maybe do some theatre again, which I’ve been missing. Or improv. Surf more. Re-establish some semblance of roots and community.

But there’s part of me that isn’t sure I want to stop moving. I remember how I started feeling stagnant and claustrophobic when I was in one place for too long. I don’t know if it’ll get that way again. Certainly, I’ll try to be smart about it, taking lots of side trips and going on adventures whenever I can, but I wonder if I’ve become addicted to the lifestyle I’ve thrown myself into for the last 14 months. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Connected States is not over; it’s just starting a new chapter. Updates will continue to come. I still have thousands of photos, videos, and stories I need to share. And I will, in one form or another. Some will be things I just touched on in this update, but really deserve the full treatment. So who cares if they don't always come in order. Linear storytelling is for the birds anyway.  In the meantime, thank you as always for reading.

-Brent Rose

9.15.16 Telluride, CO

P.S. Sorry so many embedded Instagram posts this month. Normally I like to use predominantly exclusive photography for journal updates, but it just wasn't in the cards this time. 

Found a pretty decent parking space last night... #connectedstates #vanlife #milkyway #projectvanlife

See this Instagram photo by @brentdangerrose * 153 likes

One Year of Connected States

On July 15th, 2015, one year ago today, I hit the road in a teched-out van. I didn't know where I was going or what I was doing, only that the journey itself was the destination I sought. And now here I am.

This whole time I've been telling people that I'm on "a year-long road-trip," because it was easier than explaining that I was just taking off and I'd figure things out as I went. Connected States isn't over, it's just hit a big mile-marker. If you ask me what the plan is now I'd be lying if I said I had any more idea than I did this time last year. For now, I continue on down the road.

Most of what I want to say I already said in the video above. I will add, though, that I regret not writing more and producing more video for this series. When Connected States started out it was a travel and tech series for Gizmodo, but Gizmodo is owned by Gawker Media, and Gawker Media is being sued by Hulk Hogan (and several others who are being helped out by billionaire Peter Thiel), and well, the budget dried up. Since then Connected States articles have appeared in a number of other outlets, including WIRED, Outside Magazine, Deadspin, and Conde Nast Traveler, but assignments related to Connected States became more sporadic and if I wasn't being paid specifically for a video it was tough to carve out the considerable time it takes to film and edit. Case in point, I just pulled an all-nighter to finish this video, and I have two more deadlines today. 

That said, I still wish I'd shared more video. I probably have over a hundred hours of footage at this point. The best stuff will see the light of day, eventually.

Even though the one year mark was arbitrary, I'd be lying if I didn't say that it felt good to hit it. I wasn't technically obligated to do it for that long but at least I didn't make myself a liar to all the people to whom I gave the one-year spiel. Or maybe I did, since I still don't know how much longer I'll go. I'll be tromping around the northeast for the next few weeks before I start making my way west again (I think) along a northern route (I think). We'll just have to wait and see where I end up.

Regardless, I thank you for reading, for your questions and comments, for your moral support, and for sharing my stories/videos/photos with your friends and family. You guys are awesome.

More soon, compadres,

Brent
July 15th, 2016

Where Does This Road End?

Today I’m going to talk about the dark side of #Vanlife. It’s easy to look though the lens of social media and see an idealized version of what this adventure really is. And I’m complicit in that. Most of us vanlifers are. We tell our stories through rose-colored Instagram filters. Well I’m going to try and set that aside for today.

Every time the 15th of the month rolls around I stop and reflect a bit. It usually begins with “I can’t believe it’s been X months…”. It really feels like I’ve just started. And maybe I have.

I originally said this would be “a year-long road-trip,” but here I am more than three quarters of the way through, and it doesn’t feel like I’m going to be ready to stop in a couple months. Of course, a lot can happen in 60 days, but that’s how it feels right now. There’s so much I haven’t seen, and there’s so much I want to see again. Places to re-experience. People to hug once more. Burritos to re-consume.

It probably helps that the trip keeps getting broken up by side adventures. I’ll be in the middle of the country then suddenly I have to fly to LA for a meeting, or San Francisco to shoot a video, or Colorado for a work trip. Each time I get to reconnect with good friends and/or meet new people. It breaks up the loneliness of the road. And there’s a good dose of that. But it is a good dose. It feels healthy. It feels right. Mostly. It gives me a chance to check in with myself. Where I’m at on this trip, in my career, in my life.

I continue to struggle to find the balancing point between work and play. This has been a life-long struggle, but on the road it’s amplified. I have constant, easy access to novelty and adventure. All I have to do is step out of the van and start saying YES to things, and I’ll be challenged, invigorated, stimulated, scared. Knowing that’s always on the other side of the door, it’s hard to stay inside with the blinds drawn and stare into my laptop. But that’s part of the mission, too. I’m not on vacation. I’m out here to share the journey. So here we are at last.

[Big Bend National Park, Texas]

And what to say. I could do the traditional travelogue format, but it’s been too long since my last update, and I’d have too much ground to cover. Since my last update it’s been Marfa (TX), to Big Bend National Park, then New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Grand Canyon, Atlanta, Asheville, Raleigh, Miami, Sebastian Inlet, Jekyll Island, Savannah, Charleston, Wilmington, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Washington DC. Perhaps it’s best to save that for the eventual book.

Instead, I think I’ll talk about the hard things. Because to only show you pretty pictures and fun stories would be disingenuous. The simple fact remains: Even when your vehicle is a pimped-out van with so many creature comforts, life on the road takes it out of you.

You get tired of hitting your head on things. If I shaved off all my hair I’m certain that my scalp would be a topographical map of scars. You get tired of scrambling to clean up every little splash of water, because if mildew starts to form behind a panel your home will become a petri dish for mold, allergens, and stank. You get tired of cabinets inexplicably popping open while you’re on the highway, or finding out when you hit the brakes that there was that one goddamned thing you forgot to put away, and now it’s smashed on the floor.

You’ve always been a summer person, but #vanlife is undeniably more comfortable in cooler weather. You may not like bundling up or putting on the noisy propane furnace, but you have those options. In the sauna-like heat and humidity of the southeast there’s nothing you can do on days when you need to stay in and work. Unless you’re at a paid campsite with electric hookups, you’re not going to turn on your AC. It would kill your battery in 90 seconds flat, and you running the loud, stinky generator is rarely a good option. You’re also weary of bathroom rationing; trying to use your toilet and sink as little as possible so you don’t have to empty the holding tanks as often.

And then there’s parking. Downtown—any downtown—is pretty much a nightmare. At roughly nine and a half feet tall, there are almost no covered garages you fit into, and most metered parking spaces aren’t 21 feet long. But worse is trying to find that spot to overnight.

Some Walmart. Some where.

I wish now that I kept better notes, but I would estimate that I’ve spent the night in roughly 40 different Walmart parking lots across the country since this trip began. But then you get to a very unfriendly city toward vans, like Washington DC, and even the Walmarts don’t allow overnighting, and what do you do? You find some quiet-ish residential neighborhood, you try to wait until after 10pm to park. You pull up the shades quickly, you keep your internal lights down low. You try not to make any noise. If you listen to music, you use headphones. If you talk on the phone, you use hushed tones, and suddenly you realize, “What the hell, man! This is my home! Why am I tiptoeing around my own home like some fucking burglar?”

Except you know that if someone calls the cops on you, the police will come knocking, and they’ll tell you to move, or give you a ticket, or who knows? It’s only happened to me once (in Santa Monica, CA), and though the cop was friendly enough I’ve never felt the same in the van. I’ve never slept quite as soundly. Every voice I hear outside wakes me up or puts me on guard. Every car that parks behind me and leave the engine running for a little while before they turn the car off has me sitting up, listening. I’m always waiting for that knock.

And realistically, spending weeks on end without seeing a familiar face begins to take a toll. You start feeling like a weird drifter. You start getting more agitated when someone doesn’t write or call you back. It becomes more personal. The pangs and longings—for past lovers, for friends, for family—all become more acute. More concentrated. It’s all trapped between the steel walls you live in and it gets reflected back at you. That’s when you start to wonder what the hell you’re doing. Where does it stop? How does it end? What’s next?

And yet these experiences are the things I wouldn’t trade for the world. All of them. The soaring highs and the soul-crushing lows. They aren’t just a byproduct of the experience that I came for, they are the experience I came for. When it’s all over, and I still don’t know when that will be, these are the things that on which I’ll look back and reflect. These are the things I’ll grow from. Be it staying up all night on the beach talking to wondrous strangers or finding myself alone in my van, in a parking lot, and suddenly realizing I’m on the verge of tears over seemingly nothing. It’s the same shit that everyone deals with in life, it’s just a concentrated version.

I started this entry at the eight month mark of the journey. Then I ran away from it. Then I picked it up again at the 9 month mark, then put it down again. The same thing happened at 10. So I’m sorry it’s been so long between updates. This will be going live just one week shy of the 11 month park. Some of the delay was because I finally managed to get my Cuba/Kayak story published. Some of it was because I shot a whole second season of the videos series I’ve been doing for WIRED. Here are a couple of those episodes.

Crashing NASA's Astronaut Training

Seeing how virtual reality porn is made:

But the big reason it took me so long is that I didn’t know how to process THIS—these feelings, and the larger emotional arc of the journey—in realtime. I guess I needed to take a little time to myself and just feel it. And then recover a bit from feeling it. And then repeat that whole process ad nauseum until I couldn’t take it anymore and had to say something about it. So I guess that’s where I’m at, because here this is.

We may be early into June, but it’s already a manic-feeling month. I said yes to a last-minute assignment to cover the Summer X-Games in Austin. Then I fly back to the van for two days, then off to Colorado for the GoPro Mountain Games. Then the van for a week or so and back to the Bay Area and LA to shoot some video. Back to the van, and then a wedding in early July back in the Bay Area. Meanwhile I’m hovering around Virginia and trying to make my way north. I want to hit Maine in July, if I can, and be back in Boston for my baby brother’s wedding in early August.

After that? I don’t know. I’ll probably start making my way back west. I want to see Michigan again, and Montana. I miss the west. I’d like to hit Burning Man this year (though I wouldn’t take the van; it would never be the same). But all that is past July 15th, which means I’m definitely extending this thing past the one-year mark I’d originally set for myself. How far past it I’ll go, I honestly have no idea, but I’m looking forward to finding out, with you.

As always, thank you for reading. If you’ve stuck around this far, you deserve some pretty pictures, so see below.

Love,

Brent
June 7th, 2016
Washington DC

San Diego

Near Marfa, Texas

Near Big Bend National Park, Texas

Near Big Bend National Park, Texas

Big Bend National Park, Texas

Big Bend National Park, Texas

Kendalia, TX

Between Crested Butte and Aspen, CO

Austin, TX

Grand Canyon with dad, brother, and family friend Butch

Phantom Ranch, Grand Canyon, AZ

Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon

Sebastian Inlet, Florida

Jekyll Island, GA

Jekyll Island, GA

Jekyll Island, GA

Curaçao, in the Caribbean

How I Accidentally Made The First Official Cuba-To-Florida Kayak Crossing

Image credit: Cassandra Allred

The shortest distance from Cuba to the United States is about 90 miles across the Florida Strait. By the standards of human-powered sea travel, it’s extremely doable, and it has been done for decades by refugees aboard the most makeshift of watercraft, driven by desperation. In the peak years, tens of thousand of Cuban balseros staked their lives on the journey, in hopes of finding something better at the end.

The very shortness of the trip testified to the artificiality of the separation between the neighboring countries. The bodies lost in the waters of the strait testified to how real it was. Last year, as the Obama administration set about restoring diplomatic ties with Cuba after more than half a century of mutual antagonism, the outdoor-gear company Cotopaxi decided to mark the new era with a kayak expedition across the strait, a gesture of international outreach.

A friend who does PR asked me if I’d be interested in documenting the trip. In addition to writing about it, I’d have the chance to paddle along if I wanted. It felt strange to consider the voyage as a form of recreation or as a stunt, after all those who had braved the crossing before. No matter how hard the kayak crossing might be, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as hard as it had been for the men and women on boards lashed to inner tubes. But what did normalization mean, if not the taming of the strait?

[READ THE FULL STORY AT DEADSPIN.COM]

Back on the Road, Back in the Present

Let’s talk about now. 

Right now. I’m in Arizona, in a Walmart parking lot just outside Tucson. How did I get here? 

A lot has happened since the last travelogue style piece I wrote for Connected States. That post, was on gear testing in the wilderness of British Columbia, something I did all the way back in August of last year, and wrote about in November. After that I went to Cuba, a story I’ve struggled to find an outlet for. Then the Pacific Northwest. Then down through LA, to Vegas, Arizona, and New Mexico. Then back to LA and SF, and quick trips to NY, Park City, and Aspen. There’s a lot to tell, but I’m not going to tell any of it tonight. 

I’ve fallen too far behind in my posts, and rather than let the present moment run further ahead as I try to write about the past, that was never the vision for this journal or this trip. I want you to come with me, as I go, not read about where I was months ago. 

Sometimes you just have to skip ahead. So here I am, in the present moment. 

Somewhere just east of the Arizona/California border.

I’ve been gripped, recently, but overwhelming urges to simply drop everything and hit the road. The voice came loud in mid-January, when I felt like I’d been in the Bay Area for too long around the holidays, and zip, I threw everything into the van and headed south the next day. I spent some time in LA, I flew to Houston to do a piece on NASA, which you will soon see, and I headed down to camp in San Diego for a week. It was peaceful, warm, and idyllic. 

The view from my bed for the next three days. Also, my surfboard looks like a surprised ghost. #ConnectedStates #vanlife #camping #surf #ocean #view #homeiswhereyouparkit

"The view from my bed for the next three days. Also, my surfboard looks like a surprised ghost. #ConnectedStates #vanlife #camping #surf #ocean #view..."

Yesterday evening I returned to LA, parked at a three hour meter in Santa Monica, and grabbed a quick bite with a friend. When we were done, I went back to the van, climbed inside, and closed the door. Suddenly my heart was racing. There was the voice again, screaming in my head, “Go. Go! GO! Get the fuck out of here, man!”

I had half an hour left on my parking meter. I knew the responsible thing was to stay in LA. That’s what my agents and managers wanted. What if an audition came up? What if I had to shoot a video last minute? My friend Max’s voice came to me. It said if I had to turn around and come back in a hurry (or fly back) I could just do that, but I bought this van because I wanted to be on the road. Good point, Max's voice. With five minutes to spare on the meter I reopened all of the blinds, looked up the route to Texas, and found a Walmart a few hours out along the route where I could spend the night. At 8:02pm, exactly as the meter’s timer ran out, I pulled onto the street, and headed toward highway 10. 

Those first few hours of driving east were weird, filled with trepidation. I couldn’t decide if I was running away from something or running toward something else. It felt somewhat out of control and I was relieved when I reached the Walmart parking lot safely. I immediately drew all of the blinds closed again, as is my habit, creating a little bubble for myself. I realized I still had some medicinal marijuana on me and I didn’t want to bring it across state lines. As a first-timer's gift, the dispensary had given me a pre-rolled joint made of shake from all their various buds. I asked the woman if the combined strains would completely melt my brain and she said pretty much. I typically prefer the mellower stuff, but sometimes you want to go out with a bang.

So I stepped out of the van, sparked the joint, and smoked half of it in the span of just a couple minutes. Then I flicked it and walked into the Walmart.

As the sliding glass doors slid open my eyeballs were blasted with bright lights and colors. It felt like walking into Disneyland. I walked up and down the toy isles, the hardware isles. I spent some time in bedding, contemplating whether or not I should spend a hundred bucks on a fancy new memory foam mattress topper for my bed. I tried to research it on my phone, but the internet defeated me. I fled the isle.

I’d giggle, then try to suppress it, and then giggle harder. I ended up buying some antifreeze and a roll of clear repair tape. I stepped into line behind a guy with a full shopping cart. He was dressed in casual but nice clothes. He was in his mid 40s, black, and peering at his iPhone through his glasses. 

“Oh,” he said to me. “If that’s all you’ve got you should just go ahead of me.”

“Oh thanks!” I replied. “You sure?”

“Yeah, man. I’m not some damn foreigner. Go ahead.”

“…I …um… thanks.”

Welcome to Walmart. Welcome back to the road. 

My current plan is loose at best. Tomorrow I hope to get to Marfa, TX, I place I’ve been hearing about for more than 10 years but never been to. I’ll spend a couple days there, probably, then I’ll visit some relatives in Kendalia, TX for a day or two, and then on to Austin. I’ve only been there while SXSW was going on, so I’m excited to be making it there before the circus comes to town. 

From there, I really don’t know. I’ll have to shoot some more Wired videos in CA in early-mid March, and I have another trip to CO planned right after that. I suspect I’ll leave The Beast in long-term parking in Austin or Houston, do my thing in CA, and then return and keep pushing east, but with my whole life up in the air at the moment there are no safe assumptions. You guess as best you can and you prepare to improvise.

Advice for places to go, people to meet, and things to see, photograph, and/or eat are all appreciated. And, as always, following on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter is the best way to stay up to date. Subscribing to receive this blog via email is good, too.

Glad to be back in the present moment with you.

-Brent
2.19.16 11:18pm
Tucson, AZ

Where The Hell: An Overdue Update

Hello, Connected States followers. Thank you for being a part of this adventure. Some of you may have been wondering, “Where the hell are Brent and The Beast? Why haven’t we heard anything lately?” Fair questions. Here’s what's up.

Way back in June I was told that I was being considered for a TV gig. In September I was told that I had booked it, and that we’d be shooting a pilot in L.A. in the fall. If you’ve wondered why so many of my Instagram posts have been coming from Southern CA for the last few months, well, that’s why. Or that’s most of the reason.

Those who don’t know me personally may be surprised to know that before I was a journalist, I was an actor. I’d be doing it since I was a teenager and it’s what I went to grad school for. Journalism came much later. I’d always been writing, but it was mostly limited to film scripts, plays, blog posts, and God-awful poetry (I’m so deep, you just don’t get it. Lay off me, mom!). Around 2010, though, my career in journalism started taking off much faster than my acting career was, and so I decided to go where the momentum was and embrace it. The idea was that maybe, eventually, I’d be able to leverage my journalistic success back into an on-camera career, and lo and behold, that’s what’s begun to happen. Maybe.

Booking the pilot led me to two amazing managers, Brian Stern and Ken Slotnick of AGI Entertainment. Brian and Ken led me to two amazing agents, Vanessa Silverton-Peel and Hans Schiff at CAA. Never, when I was banging my head against the wall going to open-call auditions in NY, did I dream that I would one day have such powerhouses for representation, especially by diverting my career away from acting, pursuing journalism for five years, and then slipping through this strange side-door by combining my two careers, but that’s how life works. Things never happen the way you expect them to.

All that is to say that I am again trying to go with where the momentum is, and that means mostly being near enough to Southern CA that I can swoop in for a meeting or an audition during pilot season.

Let me be very clear about one thing: CONNECTED STATES IS NOT OVER. In fact, I’m still very much in the middle of it. I’m still living in the van, I’m just exploring the urban side of off-the-grid living. I have accumulated a serious backlog of stories (including the Cuba kayaking fiasco, the Northwest, the Southwest, and the City of LA), and I’m hoping to start pushing those out, soon. I’ll supposedly find out whether that pilot will become an actual show in the next month or so, and even if it does I plan on continuing to live the #vanlife while we’re shooting. I didn’t start this trip as a stunt; it’s simply the way I want to be living right now, and I don’t see any of these career developments changing that.

So that’s the story. That’s where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. I had to fly to NY for some meetings, and I’m currently on my way to Aspen to test some new gear and check out Periscope’s GoPro integration. Sadly, Ashley, the Beast, is not with me for these trips. Why? I still have not found a good solution for winterizing the van. I love Ashley dearly, but she is poorly insulated. See, she has a full water system (shower, sink, and toilet), and just like the hoses and pipes in your house, if Ashley’s hoses and pipes freeze they will likely crack, which would lead to thousands of dollars of damage and a mildew-pocalypse from which she may never recover.

The only solution I’ve heard offered to this is to empty the water tanks and fill them all with non-toxic RV anti-freeze, but I’m not down with this. Because I’m living in it full-time, that would mean that I wouldn’t have a way to wash dishes or clean myself, and that’s a deal-breaker. I’ve contemplated blowing foam insulation into the sidewalls and roof and then installing a more-efficient diesel heater, but I don’t trust myself with an install like that and I can really shell out to have someone else do it. Even that wouldn’t guarantee that the black and grey water tanks (which are located underneath the van, on the outside) wouldn’t freeze and crack. Still trying to figure all that out.

A video posted by Brent Rose (@brentdangerrose) on Feb 1, 2016 at 10:07am PST

I have continued to make improvements, though. For starters, I recently used a tool called the Whizzy Wheel to remove the majority of the decals from the outside of the van. Not only were they already starting to peel but they looked cheesy, making my girl look more like a plain old RV, instead of the high-tech van that she is. I also installed Philips Hue color-changing Light Strips, which I’ll be showing off soon in video, but suffice to say it’s one of the best additions I’ve made. Can’t wait to show you.

So, that’s the update. I’ve been humbled by the interest that people have taken in this adventure, and I promise that I’ll have more updates very soon. You can always follow along on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and I've finally added an option to subscribe to this blog by email. Keep following, and I promise I’ll keep it interesting for you.

As always, thank you for reading.

-Brent

[NEW Subscribe via email!]

The British Columbian Wilderness and the Baddest Water Filter Ever Built

300 miles north of Vancouver lies the Great Bear Rainforest. It’s a huge, rugged, chunk of land with ample diversity of scenery, and the best part is that it is very, very sparsely populated. Think Yellowstone minus the tourists. In a nutshell, you want to go to there. [READ THE FULL STORY ON GIZMODO]

What It's Really Like to Ride in a Tricked-Out Red Bull Stunt Plane

The Red Bull Air Race just finished up its 2015 season in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago. Dreams were crushed, world champions were crowned, and a bunch of amazing planes did things that seemed to violate the laws of physics. I got to ride on one, and I’m here to tell you that it’s pretty much the most fun you can have with your pants on. 

[READ THE REST AT OUTSIDE MAGAZINE]

Van Life: The Strangers I Met on the Road From Montana to Oregon

If the theme of my last Connected States column was about friends on the road, this one is about strangers. Those people who you never would have met if you hadn’t ventured from the nest. On the road through Montana, Idaho, and Oregon, I was lucky enough to meet some rather wonderful unfamiliars, some of whom really saved my bacon.

[Read the rest on Gizmodo.]

Pimp My Van: All the Tech I've Added to the Beast

At last! You've been asking for a rundown on the techy customizations I've added to the van and here it is. This is a video I did for WIRED that walks you through all of it. If you've got questions, feel free to ask 'em below. 

More details on in the post over at WIRED.