VAN LIFE REALITY: Beyond The Adventures And Thrills!

Some days start out better than others, and in van life, yes, most of the time we are doing and seeing amazing things, but sometimes you got to just stop and get some stuff done. Now, today started with taking our kitty cats to the vet to get something called a teeter test. Basically, they test to make sure they have rabies antibodies in their blood, and they're at no risk of picking up any kind of a rabies as we travel to some of these less developed countries. It is not something we really needed to deal with over in the Americas, but here in Europe it was a necessity, so it is something we needed to get checked off the list, and it was terrible. The vet was great. Everything was great. We still are here with Kirk's friend from high school that's lived over in this part of the world for 30 years, and he helped us, so all of that was wonderful, but they had to draw blood from our kitty cats' teeny tiny little arms, and it was just heartbreaking, so that was the start to our day. Now, we are making a drive. We have left the island of Kirk. We are back on the mainland in Croatia, and we are headed west. Now, I think we're gonna cross some mountain ranges and drive through some beautiful territory, but we are on our way to pick up some packages. Now, getting deliveries on the road when you don't have a home and you live in a van that's on four wheels, or six wheels in our case, getting deliveries is hard, so both of these package pickups have been in the works for a long time, and these are some really, really super exciting packages, but first we got to get there, and let's see what this road turns out to be like. Tim told us it was gonna be a beautiful drive, and it's starting to already look that way. Alright, our toll for today, $14.70. Thank you. So, that'll be one way and then back, so it'll be a total of about, well, 30 bucks, right? Yeah, a little more. Euro to dollar. So, we have come through some beautiful mountain drives, saw some pretty little villages, some of the fog was pretty, the way it was laying over the beautiful green mountains, some of it was intense and scary. We were coming through some of those mountain curves, and there was no visibility, and it's been raining the entire way, but it's been a good drive. We are about, still got about an hour to go, but we are going through the capital, Zagreb, Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. I think we'll stay on the outskirts, but that's where we're at. So, you may remember, two and a half months ago, when we shipped the van all the way from Argentina to Belgium, and we went to pick our van up, we discovered that someone had tried to break into our van, in the oddest place. First, they had broke into our attic up top, under our solar panels, and then they had tried to figure out how to wiggle down through the ceiling fan, the max air fan in the roof of our van, and when they did that, they tried to disassemble it, pull it out and everything, just never gonna work the same again. They busted it all down. Yeah, so that fan was dead, and Tim, an amazing subscriber who's been following our journey for a while, and his wife, who happens to be from Croatia, which is why I'm telling you this story right now, sent us a message that he had had plans to actually come over here. Right now, they reside over in the States, but they were gonna come over here and build a van. Well, they had some life getting in way, before they could actually pull the trigger on starting the construction. So that has been canceled. They're still in the States, and a lot of the parts that he had started ordering to build his van are here at her mom and dad's house, and they are amazing, because they sent us a message and offered us, as a gift, that max air fan, which is unbelievable. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you! Yeah, now that is where we're headed, to Tim and Valentina's parents house, her parents house, so Tim's in-laws, and they live out on a farm in rural Croatia, and we're gonna pick up a fan, and they also allowed us to have a very special delivery sent there, and that is waiting for us too. Now, from what we understand, communication is going to be not done with many words, because we don't speak Croatian, and they don't speak but a few words of English, so we're excited for the cultural experience of seeing what going to a true Croatian farm out in the rural, rural parts of the state and the country are gonna be, but uh, you now know as much as we do. Let's go pick up these packages. So the Google lady did it again, almost had us going down some tiny little dirt muddy road that probably would have had us stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, but we whatsapped with Tim back home, he set us straight. After driving around for 10 minutes, we finally found the parents house, and we pulled in. Mom was waiting outside for us. It's been a rainy day, and it's still raining, so we didn't get to visit as much as we would have liked, because it was cold and rainy, but we did get to visit with the dog Mickey. We gathered up the new Maxx Air fans, and the secret package, which we're gonna reveal to you tomorrow. We loaded everything up in the van. Oh, treats! Treats! Woo! Look at this. Kurt, you got some eggs. So, he, he loves eggs, and cookies. Thank you so much! Here, see. Oh, yay, eggs for Kurt! Woohoo! We scored some yummy homemade cookie treats. Croatian cookies. Awesome, thank you all so much. We're so grateful, and these cookies are literally the icing on the cake. Tasty? Tasty. All right, now I'm trying the other flavor. We've got two different kinds of Croatian cookies that were baked up and sent with us for a road trip. Mine looks like a cute little cheeseburger. Here we go. Oh, they're like the best donut hole ever, with chocolate inside, coated in some sort of pink sugary goodness. These won't last long. Woohoo! The original plan was to spend the night up here somewhere, because by the time we got here, it was about 330 or 4, and to get back to the camp we left from would have been four hours, but two things happened. One, these boxes were all much bigger than we thought, so there is no room to maneuver around in the van. It is slapped full of boxes. The other one is, there's actually a snowstorm coming in, and we are up higher into the mountains, and tomorrow morning they're gonna start getting ice and snow. So, we have made the decision to turn around, drive all the way back to the coast, which means we're gonna be driving at night. Now, if you followed our journey over in Latin America, you do not drive at night over there. But here, these roads, they're fantastic, they're lit up, everything's safe. We'll be on major highways most of the way, so that's where we're gonna leave y'all for the night. We will see y'all in the morning when, if the weather's good, Kurt's gonna start installing our brand-new Maxxair fans. And we're gonna reveal the secret surprise that's taking up all the space inside the van. We'll see you guys in the morning. Good morning, everyone. We made it back to the island last night. It was a late night, but we made it nice, safe, and sound. Had a good night's rest. And today, we install some fans in the van. You can see Kurt already has the ladder up, he's got the attic popped up, and he's walked down here to get the fans. We're parked here at Nato's house, who is a friend of our friend Tim, and he has been amazing with letting us park in his driveway. They've actually gone off on a little vacation for a few days. Kurt stored the giant boxes down in their garage overnight, so here he comes. Maxxair fan number one. Now, to be completely honest with you guys, we both woke up with a little bit of a sore throat. It's all this freezing cold weather. Hot, cold, hot, cold. Our bodies are still adjusting, but the rain's supposed to come in tomorrow, so we got to get these fans put in today. You ready, Kurtie? Now, one thing that's nice about these fans is they're the exact same model of our other fan, right, Kurt? But they should make it a super easy install, well, an easier install than if we were installing them from scratch. Should just be able to slide them down into the existing frames through the rooftop. That's what we're thinking, right, Kurtie? Yeah, splice the wires, and good to go. Woo-hoo! There's the wires right there. One, two, three, four. So I believe all I'm gonna have to do after I splice the wires, slide this down on there, and put those four screws in, and we should be good to go. Oh, let's hope it's that easy, guys. All right, so we took the four screws off, and there's a shroud. If you can see it like a fake faceplate, the wires go behind there. So I don't have enough play on the wires, so we're gonna have to take this shroud off. So I'm gonna have Ed Snow. I'm going to work. Put her to work. We are progressing nicely. We did have a little wiring glitch Kurt had to do a little work on. Caused us to blow one fuse, but that's okay. We have spares, and now we're good to go. We're installing everything up top, and then we'll put this bottom thing on, and then we'll move to fan number two. Woo-hoo! You doing all right up there, Kurtie? Slowly but surely. So in case you ever wondered how we access both sides of the attic, Kurt designed it with little access panels, and it is very rare that we have to use them, but to finish this fan install, he's up in there. Now this is also the access panel that someone tried to break in through. Broke our locks and our little latch, climbed up in there, broke our old ceiling fan, and was gonna try to climb down through the ceiling. Just couldn't figure out how to do it, but they had to be a teeny tiny person. Right, Kurtie? He says yeah if you can't hear him, but we're about to get it. The second one will be much easier. All right, there you go. We've got the new fan in. Snow, you want to open it? Just like the ones we had before, except these have the smoke clear top, which is nice for light. You turn the fan on, remote control, quiet, perfect. We're back in business. Thank you guys so incredibly much. Wow, I don't know how long it would have been before we could replace those, and this is a big part of living in the van with air circulation, keeping the air fresh in there, and such a huge, huge thing. So thank you guys, but we got these things in, so now it's time to open our new surprise. If you all remember back in Brazil, we made a decision because we were coming to Europe, and it was going to be cold, that we needed to store water inside the van instead of just under in case we got in freezing temperatures, and so that is what we did. The addition of the extra water and the extra weight, unfortunately, Matt. We had to sell our folding, wonderful, electric bikes. And a lot of you have said, you know, this is the perfect place for the electric bikes. We agree. We agree. But they won't fit, so we found an alternative. And a company reached out to us, and we have two little electric scooters, so let's open them up and see what these things are like. They'll both fit, won't they? All right guys, we got awesome new toys. Now if you followed our journey for a while, you know we used to have electric bikes. They just took up too much of our storage space, and they were too heavy, and they were very heavy, and a little awkward to fold up and get in and out of the van. So we made the hard decision to sell those back in Brazil, and ever since then, we have been looking for a better choice. And then Engway reached out to us, and at first, because Engway sells bicycles too, they said, would you like to try an electric bike? And we said, won't fit in our van, but do you have a scooter? And they said yes, and they said, we will send you not one, but two scooters for you to enjoy on your journey. So guys, we've had them for a few weeks. We've tested them out. This is not going to be an extremely technical review of the Engway scooter. That's what Snow says. We are not, or I am not, a super technical person. What I will tell you is that we have fallen in love with these things. Now we're not looking for super fast speed and tons of power. We're looking for a comfortable, safe, leisurely way to park our van outside of these towns and drive into them without wearing ourselves out on the walk. And this is fitting the bill. It's got some pretty cool features. I love the little horn. It's even got turn signals. It's got turn signals. It's got brake lights. It's got little disco lights on the bottom, so if you're riding it at night, you're lit up nice and bright. It's got two beautiful little brakes, because I like to go slow. And it has brake lights. It does have brake lights. One thing you need to know is, I have not gotten this thing to full speed. Now I know some people out there are looking for speed. They have a need for speed. That is not me, and that is not our lifestyle. We like to move slow. I've gotten this thing up to about 25 kilometers per hour. That is as fast as I need to go. I cruise at about 20, 17 to 20 kilometers an hour. That's perfect. I will tell you that I have had it going fast enough where I didn't want to go any faster, and so I put on the brakes. So they go fast enough. Now if you're going up a hill and the batteries are low, you might have to give it a little push. It doesn't have a ton of power to go up super steep hills, especially when you're a little bit on the chunky side like me. But a little foot push and it goes just as good as you need to do. It has excellent shock systems, so even riding on the cobblestone roads over here in Europe, it is a comfortable ride. Yeah, so there's a shock on the seat, which I haven't had this, seen this on a bike or anything, but this along with the front and the back suspension, this is a really comfortable ride for a scooter as far as I'm concerned. It has, I forget what you call it Kurt, but like solid tires so you they won't puncture easy. Tubeless tires. Tubeless tires. It's got a real wide standing board, so we both decided that it's a lot smoother if you sit. It's a little more wobbly, go bigger as a scooter, but there's plenty of room to stand up on it and it's fun. You can lift this up if you want to stand up and it goes back down. Everything is adjustable. Guys, this thing is totally fitting the bill and I'm in love with them. It's got a digital readout so you can see your speed, how far you've traveled, also your battery gauge. It's got a 48 volt battery. I'm not sure exactly the size of it, but we haven't charged them and we've used them a few times. I think we still got four deals of power. Yeah, so the battery seems to be lasting pretty good and they're fun. They're fun. These things are fun. And they fold up, these fold down, the handlebars fold down, the seat folds down and collapses. Yeah, super easy. They're not as heavy as the bikes were so it's still up to Kurt to put them in the back of the van, but it's much easier, right Kurt? It's probably about half, if not even a little bit less, the weight of the electric bikes. They were pretty heavy and they were also bulky to lift so I was really about worried about hurting my back and also we had to put a water tank in the back. Yeah, we lost a lot of space. We needed smaller. We needed to shed some weight and some size. So what I will tell you guys is first, thank you a ton to Engway for sending us two of these guys. Yes, they sent them to us free, but this is not a slanted review. We truly do love these things and you're gonna see them popping up in our videos for a long time to come. They're sturdy, they're secure, they're made well. They are considered an economical scooter that you can buy so they're affordable. We're gonna put a link to their website in the description. If you were looking for something a little more zippy, like you're gonna ride to work every day and you're gonna be zipping it out of traffic, this may not be the scooter for you. But if you're just looking to tool around and have some fun and see some cool sights. This thing is awesome! These things are great. Yeah, all right. So guys, again, thank you to Engway. Go over and check out their website. See what they got. Even if you're looking for a bike, guys, they have been tons of fun and very supportive with their customer service and it's it's a good little scooter. With that, we will see you guys in a few days and you'll probably see these scooters in the next video too. Cheers! If you like this video, be sure to subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell so you guys know when we put out new videos. And don't forget, you can always follow us over on Instagram to see what's going on in between videos. Cheers guys!