My home/van

On Sunday I made all kinds of plans of how to improve the interior of my van. Making more shelfs, decorating the seats, putting a top window in the roof, painting the roof... I had the feeling I could make it a real home now. Ready for the Summer in the Alps!

On Monday I brought my van to the garage because it made a bit a weird sound.

That midday I heard it would cost me €900 just to get a new axle, not to mention all the costs to get the car through the next MOT in September.

All together to get it through MOT it would cost me around €3000. As much as a whole new van. The mechanic showed me the axle, shock absorbers, the rust, the oil leaking out and all other things. I was surprised that the thing was still driving at all.

Fuck! €3000 is way too much for me. I really can’t afford fixing the van. €3000 is enough for half a year of full-time climbing, a plane ticket to South Korea and all additional Iceclimbing competitions, €3000 is a lot of money.

Even if I’d do most of the things myself, like fixing the rusty parts, get parts from some scrapheap...It’d still cost me more then €2000 and a lot of time. And time is something I don’t have these days...sort of. It’s actually a matter of priorities: if I want to climb something in the Alps I have to go there now, and not next month. So, I need a working car now...

Hopefully Dennis’ van will do the job!

So, if you know a good car mechanic who can weld some new plates on my car, get an extra long Ford Transit axle and knows how to deal with oil leaking out on some places...

I’m thinking of selling the car in parts. The engine is pretty good with just 120.000k on the counter and the rest just works fine as well.

Any ideas of what to do now??? (Please mail me:)

Next week we planned to go to the Alps. Take Dennis’ van and climb, on real rock. Join the Tout a Bloc competition, try to climb Far West (8a) and get into real multipitch climbing! Dennis wants to climb on Dibona (just Google it) and I, eh, well, I want to climb all routes, just as much as possible, as long as it’s trad and difficult ;)

The pictures are taken on the Worldcup in Eindhoven. Was this the last trip of my good van and home...?