Spending lots of time in the van is an inevitable part of our journey around the world. Life in the van has become like a sport. It is a skill to be mastered, and we are always working to get better at effectively and enjoyable passing the time in the van.

When we’re on the night shift, effective use of van time means one thing only: sleep. All seat configurations, luggage and gear storage, and stop frequency are adjusted for sleep optimization. With the vans we got in Belarus and will be using until Mongolia, we have a lot more control over the seat configuration. We can rotate, incline, and otherwise adjust pretty much any seat or bench in the vehicle. This is good and bad. There are almost too many potential configurations, such that we spent our first week messing around with the setup more than we should have. In fact, just as John Candy did in the movie “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”, we ended up messing around with one pivotal seat so much that we actually broke the dang thing. Serves us right.

During the daytime shifts, we are far more social and productive in the van. We write blogs on the computer, we read, we chat, we play scrabble, and most recently, we’ve taken to playing hearts. We still seek out the best roadside cafes to stop at for meals, although the Siberian-Kazak infusion (i.e., dumplings, eggs or pancakes) we’ve been finding has been fairly consistent for the past two weeks. Most importantly, now and then we get into a very heated discussion or debate, which is the best use of van time.