Is This Really Happening? 🤯 #vanlife

Good morning! Today is the day we figure out, hopefully, fingers crossed, what the heck is going on with our Mercedes Airstream campervan. It is approximately 7 15. We have an appointment at the local Mercedes dealership here in Rockland, California to bring you up to speed. We were at a campground just north of here about two and a half hours when the van completely broke down. We went to start it to leave the campground and it was D.E.A.D. So here we are trying to figure out what our next move is. Next step, I'm going to Uber to the Mercedes dealership. Hopefully, they have a loaner cart available for us. We called yesterday. They said they should, but you just never know. Then that's our game plan. Literally, we have no game plan. Our game plan is completely reliant on what happens with our campervan. We're going to bring you all along and we'll see what happens. All righty, here comes our Uber ride. There's our baby in the service bay. Don't know if I should be concerned, but there is a lot of sprinters here lined up. Like, a lot, a lot. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of sprinter vans here and quite a few sprinter campervans here that are at the service bay. I don't know what that's all about, but I said they came in waves and that could be there where it will be the case. Now, fun fact that to disengage drive train to load it onto the tow truck yesterday and in order for Mercedes to work on it, they're going to have to reattach it. I'm already starting with a $288 bill. Now, this thing is 60 days old. Needless to say, I'm going to be stiffing somebody, not stiffing somebody, but I'm going to be sticking somebody with this $288 bill because, well, I mean, I didn't break it and it's 60 days old. My next call this morning is to kind of figure out who's going to pick up the tab for this, but also, also need to figure out what our next move is here. We've got a hotel for today, but we have to check out here pretty soon. They're hoping to get it into the shop today so they can start working on it, but there's no guarantees. So I think we're going to book one more night here in Rockland, California, and then go from there. Now, while we're here, check out how cool this is right here. A little G-Wagon action. This is the AMG G63 4x4. True story, this, bam, vehicle behind me, $350,000. Pricey, but man, it's sexy. Just made it back to the hotel. Time to head back up to the room. Lauren and Dash, well, Dash technically was still sleeping, so that's why they stayed behind, but also because, well, we didn't want to put a car seat in an Uber just to go up the road to the dealership. So they kind of stayed behind and I'll jump back up to the room, fill Lauren in, and hopefully at some point today, fingers crossed, we get a call from Mercedes with some good news. I guess we'll just see how it goes. We have fast forwarded one complete day and I will bring you up to speed. It is the very next morning. Late yesterday afternoon, there wasn't really much going on throughout the day, so late yesterday afternoon, we got a call from Mercedes. The premise of it is that they ran some software updates, they got the battery running, they did a road test, they were able to do that yesterday in the afternoon. Everything is up and running now. That's the goal and that is what they accomplished. The cause of it is still a little muddy. I've sent all the information over to Vinny. It's been amazing working with Vinny over at Vinny's North Bay Airstream and he has been awesome. And the crazy thing is I've never actually even met him, even though I've texted and talked to him many, many times. So that'll be fun. We're going to go pick up the van from the Mercedes dealership and then we're going to bring it back to the hotel because we still have to pack. It's very, very early in the morning. Then we're going to load it up and then we're going to start to head towards Vinny's today. And from there, there's an entirely different thing that's going to happen because there we have to have some hail damage repaired as well. Yeah, because this also happened to the van while we were in Nebraska like two weeks ago. Moral story is that we're here. It took roughly the entire day yesterday to get them to get it up and running. It's up and running. And we're going to see what it's like when we get there. We're going to ask a few more questions. So let's do this. They're really happy. You want to talk? Uh oh. Sorry, dude. You're not tall enough to activate the doors. Oh, me neither. Bad news, they couldn't get it fixed. The good news is we're leaving with this bad boy. Just kidding. Yeah. Some new sprinklers in here today. Been checking them out because I wanted to see how they do like somebody had the recovery boards. What do you call those? Recovery tracks or whatever on roof yesterday and I was like well that's a pretty good spot to store them so kind of cool to check out other people's rigs. Do the same thing we have a towable trailer. Is it just me or was no one else expecting to see another Sprinter van at the Mercedes dealership? A little concerned about that. All right, so we just talked to the team. They gave us the keys and software update is the word. Apparently it answers all of the weird glitchy things that we were dealing with as far as the door opening and the locks and the whole nine and they said it works right now so they said go have fun therefore we're taking her to Vinny's. Yeah, so Lauren walked in, saw this with our cabinetry and needless to say she's not very happy right now. I don't know what to say. Just talked to the Mercedes team. Oh hold on somebody's out of my seat. And apparently they think that the tow truck company that this must have happened when it was being towed but no one who was working on the van or test drove it noticed that all of this was out which I'm happy we're taking it to Vinny's. That's all I got because nothing else about this is I have nothing positive else to say. How you feeling right now? Is there a crack in your Disney? Is it getting bigger? No, I just think that it's very frustrating and I don't think it's possible for you to test driven this vehicle and not have heard the amount of clanking and noticed that the drawers are broken. Yeah, so now that we're doing a little damage assessment now that we've moved some of the drawers away what's going on here? We punched a hole in the floor. Yeah, look at that brand new floors. Done ripped a hole in it. This right here is jacked. Yeah, so oh yeah this one's absolutely broken and then this one's broken obviously. Okay, well let's get the car seat in here and get to Vinny's because guess what? We have an appointment already and now he has our work. I hope he likes us. Moment of truth. It starts. That's all I got. I was trying to think of something else to say but that's that's all I've got. I'm sure there are a hundred learning lessons throughout this entire van experience but one of the things that I would say at this point if you ever have to have your RV or your vehicle towed I would say make sure you follow the tow vehicle and double check and make sure the vehicle is fine after it has been towed because we signed off he was like oh no don't worry about it you know. I have to sign all the paperwork at Mercedes. You actually don't have to be there just be there tomorrow morning for your appointment. Now I wish we had not done that. I wish we would have followed them and checked to make sure that the airstream was fine before he signed it over to Mercedes because now I'm sure as we try to figure out who's going to be responsible for the damage to the drawers and the floor which will need to be replaced I'm sure it's gonna be a blame game and blame games are frustrating. So if you ever have to have a vehicle towed follow them to the shop make sure it's fine before they leave. So obviously the windshield needs to be cleaned but but honestly like watch this I'm not even flooring it. Look at that. I feel like at least it has more pickup now. Now maybe that is like 100% in my head but like when I floor it like look at that. Oh it does feel like it's actually moving. Like before I would floor it and it's it's like loading loading you know and then like it would slowly build some uh you slowly accelerate but legitimately I don't know if it's a software update or if it's just 100% in my head I feel like it has more like get up and go. Again that's just how I feel now that I'm driving it now. That's interesting. I don't know what to say about that. I don't know what would cause that or not cause that or whatnot but interesting observation after just picking up the van. Now we're basically just gonna park her in front of the hotel and go grab our stuff take her to the next shop but thankfully we're feeling pretty good about hanging out with Vinny because his team has been so flexible with us. They know what they're doing. We also learned that apparently Vinny spent like 10 or 15 years working with Mercedes before he opened his own shop too so like we think he might have pulled a few strings and got our van done early because it wasn't supposed to be done today. So we're feeling really good about trusting him to help us figure out this cluster. Really honestly one of the main reasons we're going to Vinny, I'm gonna be honest with you because we didn't know too much about Vinny and his team is because of a bunch of you. A bunch of you recommended that we go to Vinny's and we listened to your recommendations. We don't always get to all of the comments but we definitely listen to your recommendations and everybody's like you gotta go to Vinny's you gotta get Ivan to do the dents. We're getting like personal messages from close friends that are like Ivan is the magician. You gotta get him to remove all your hail damage so that's exactly where we're headed here because of recommendations from you guys. So because of that thank you and we're gonna let you know how it turns out. All right van loaded with our stuff. Are you ready to go see Vinny Dash? Yes. Yes okay. You like having that bag right there? Is it fun to play with? To Vinny's we go. All right so ready to see how bad the hail damage really is? Apparently this light is going to show us the truth. Can you see that on camera? I think so. Let's see. Yeah you definitely can. Yeah looks like a golf ball. Oh look at that. Yeah well welcome to our new facility here in Sacramento. It's such a pleasure to actually get to meet you Vinny. You are like really popular. Oh a lot of nice clients that's for sure. Well tell us a little bit about your small business. You know as one of your local that's a big thing for us. We want to feature small businesses. Thank you. So tell us a little bit how long you've had it and what you love about it. So basically it kind of started in or around 2008 when I bought an airplane. Okay. And I thought I could probably do some of this technical background. Now you guys are here week one. That's so exciting. So we just moved in. We're really excited. Well we're happy to be here. We're happy to have you. High five? Can you give him a high five? Give Vinny a high five dude. He hasn't had his morning nap yet. He'll get there. You got to introduce the other famous person that we're hanging out with. Yes yes yes. Whoa hey who's that guy? Ivan the great. I'm the damn with you guy. Well we're super pumped. I think our van needs you. Would you say that? Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. Yeah. We're excited to see the end product. Which is our good thing. Yeah I think we're gonna take care of it. All right. Beautiful. All right grass man you ready? The van's staying at the spa. Yeah. Yeah. So after talking to Vinny they got the information that they needed to be able to determine at least a starting point for what needs to be done with the van. And because they aren't going to start on it today because we're late. Um they said you know if you guys want to take the van for the next couple of days bring her back. That's perfectly fine so that way you don't have to worry about a rental car. So that's good. So that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna take the van. We're gonna go get lunch um and then we'll fill you in a little more detail about what's next for Wander Local and Van Life. Backup skills. I feel so confident. You've got room on this side. Do I? I can't see back there. Stop. Right in front of our room. Nice and tight. Which one is your favorite? That's a car. It's a convertible. Music was a little loud in there so we weren't able to really tell you but holy moly those tacos were delicious. But we've had the coffee. It requires like 12 rounds of coffee and we've only had one so we saw a local coffee shop just around the bend and that is where we're going now. Come on let's go. Dash what is that buddy? Is it a muffin? Yeah. Lemon lavender. You can have dad dad's bite. You can have another one. And there's a bear in the coffee. You know at this point if you've been following our channel that we have probably been to several gajillion billion trillion million coffee shops. I cannot give this place the here in Sacramento a higher recommendation. Not only is the coffee art next level on lattes but the beans are absolutely delicious. It's absolutely well made. I mean honestly I can't rave enough about it. What do you think about it? I think it's fantastic and I will note that there's a series of them so it must be like a little small local chain in this area. Freaking deliciousness. What are we gonna do with our lives? There are moments where when things just ascend into absolute chaos and it seems like things are out of control. You just need to do a level set and I think that's where we're at right now. We're gonna go back to our next hotel. That's kind of the irony of all this. We spent more in hotels than we ever anticipated because we're gonna be living off grid and doing all that cool stuff but we're gonna go back to the hotel and then we're going to figure out our lives and see what we're gonna do next. Can we have a moment about the fact though that like moms should not wear white? This was so ambitious thinking that this was gonna be a good idea for the day. One really cool thing about today is that we got to meet celebrities Benny and Ivan. We've heard so much about them from you guys so it was cool to meet them in person and they're just as nice and genuine in person which is a big bonus because we're putting our trust and faith in them to get us squared away with this van. It's huge. But for real we have no idea what we're gonna do with our lives. Want to find out with us? Make sure you subscribe but until next week my friend make sure you wander local because even though van life might not be it sure is good for the soul.