Rock Climber Lives in a SUV in order to Travel Solo and Eats for Free
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Renee is a full time rock climber who lives in an SUV that she’s named Gertie or Gertrude Stein. She was looking for a vehicle for maybe a month. She wanted to hit the road really fast, she had money already saved up and so she was itching to go. She ended up getting a Honda Element because she liked the way that it utilized all of the space and didn't have any features just to look cool or interesting. In her opinion, it’s probably the ugliest car, but it's ugly for a purpose. And she really likes how inconspicuous it is. It's super short, has four-wheel drive, decent clearance, and it’s pretty reliable.
She was introduced to climbing by one of her roommates about three years ago. She instantly fell in love with it, but she was 26 at the time and she just felt like she had a lot of catching up to do. She’s always been into traveling and would work a job just long enough to save up money for the next adventure. She knew when she found out that being a ‘dirtbag’ or living on the road was a part of the climbing lifestyle that it was perfect for her.
Gertie is a 2005 Honda Element with 160,000 miles. Renee has a cargo box on top which stores a ton of her climbing gear as well as some of her dirty clothes, laundry detergent and a camping chair. She has a water jug, and dry food in this bin there which includes Nutella, a staple. For clothing storage she uses a shoe box holder. For her, it is the easiest way to keep everything organized like her towel, sweaters, and books she’s reading. She uses bungee cords for hanging scarves that she uses as curtains as well as anything that needs to dry out. For light, she uses two Luci lights which she can charge off the built in solar panels.
Renee is a freegan, so she gets a lot of her food from dumpster diving. In terms of things like baked goods, sandwiches, yogurt parfaits, everything that you could ever eat from Starbucks, there’s a lot of perfectly good food you can find in their dumpsters. For cooking she has a two burner stove. In the back under her bed platform she has more food storage as well as a lot of spices. If you want to live cheap you gotta learn to cook with all sorts of grains. She really likes Indian cuisine, so the spices allow her to make flavourful meals that are inexpensive. Tahini and peanut butter are staples for her as well, they’re energy dense and keep well without refrigeration.
Then she has some bathroom products and climbing gear. The awesome thing about the element is that all the seats fold flat so you could even use an Element as a camper without building the bed, but she wanted to take one of the seats out so that she has more room for storage. The element is exactly four feet on the inside so she was able to get a sheet of plywood and cut it in half. She can fold the platform in half and then she can pop up the third seat for a passenger.Sometimes like if she’s in the city she’ll want more privacy and the scarves will allow or it's just too bright she uses reflectix to cover the windows.
She likes to hang a petzl headlamp so she can easily access it at night. Also for stealth camping, the main tip is like pee before you get there, get in your car as fast as possible, and then immediately cover everything up. It’s important to stay out of your car until you are sleeping in it and then when you wake up get moving as quickly and discreetly as possible.
Her advice to women who are interested in traveling solo but scared to get started is to be smart. Trust your instincts. If someone's making you uncomfortable don't be alone with that person. She has mace in her car but she still always locks the doors when she’s sleeping and she usually doesn't sleep in places where there are other people around. It's got to be either nobody else is around or she’s in a place where there's a bit of a community. She would say don't let that stop you because like it's not any more dangerous being on the road than it is being in the city walking to and from work or the subway or even being in your home. We've learned as a world that there's really no safe space. You should never let fear keep you from doing things that you want to do, but you should also do so with awareness.
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