The beginning of the Odyssey

Above is the inspiration for Lydia and I to create a blog to share pictures and stories with our friends and families. If you don't know us, you might think that the story of a young couple and their minivan might be pretty boring, but hopefully, that won't be the case.

The whole idea of a minivan started as Lydia and I were considering some sort of vehicle for long trips that we filled the following needs:

• Reasonable gas mileage (The Truck won't do...)
• Have room for 2 people, 2 dogs, 2 kayaks, and 2 bikes, plus sleeping accommodations (The Subaru is out...)
• Must be capable of being driven on most normal roads (No RVs, plus #1 rules them out)
• Since we already have 3 running vehicles, it must be CHEAP

So, I began searching E-bay, craigslist, autotrader, etc. looking for a good candidate. My primary candidates were the Honda Odyssey and the Toyota Sienna due to the reputation that these vehicles have for reliability, and they also have the best fuel mileage of the bunch. I happened upon a 1999 Honda Odyssey with 135,000 miles for a low price of $4200. The owner stated that he had had some slight transmission slippage problems that are now gone for the time being, and that the body had some cosmetic issues, hence the low price. After some research, I found that these vans have historically had transmission issues at around ~100k miles, but there were no other major issues. We test drove the van, haggled with the owner a bit, and got it for $3600. This leaves us a good bit of$ left over buying a pristine van to deal with possible transmission issues. When Steve, the owner of the van, heard that we were planning on making an "RV" out of it to take on trips, he asked if we were planning on blogging about our adventures. Good idea, Steve!

As soon as we arrived home, we began to clean out the van. This van was DISGUSTING! (Sorry Steve) We immediately took out the middle seats, folded the back seat down, and got to work. I think the total came out to $1.28 in change, 3 bags of Doritos, lots of popcorn, 2 lollipops, a few mints, 7 pencils, 2 birthday candles, and several gallons of coffee, coke, etc. Also, the "passenger" on the right side of the van left us some beautiful artwork on the upholstery. After a few hours of vacuuming and scrubbing with Resolve we had a clean canvas to work with. The next item on the agenda was to build our sleeping platform. The platform will allow us to store all of our stuff under, while being able to sleep in the van. After a trip to Lowe's for lumber and Wal-mart for Padding and Vinyl, we were ready to build. The platform is a very basic 2x4 structure with a 3/8" plywood top. The first layer of padding we used was cheap 1/2" camping pads. These are pretty dense, and give a good firm base.

Next, we covered the sleeping pads with a foam "egg crate" mattress pad. The combination of the two makes a good pad, better than most camping pads. You can see Maggie helping us situate the egg crate in the bottom right corner.

Finally we covered the top with black vinyl to keep the padding clean and dry in case of nappy kayakers or vicious dog attacks.

And the finished product installed in the van...

We have a few remaining items to finish to make the van "trip worthy"... First, we need a Stereo that will allow us to play our Ipod (and one that has all of the buttons intact). I have one on order with that new-fangled HD radio feature, so we'll get that installed soon. We also need an inverter for powering 110 volt stuff (also on order) and roof racks for all the toys, which will be today's project.

That's all for now!