A Man, A Van and a Woman Who Can // S02E03

Welcome back to Combi Life. Ben and I are currently overlanding across Europe with the dream of reaching Asia. We're a little over a week into the trip and have made it as far as Italy, which officially means there is nothing that can make us turn around now. Or is there? This episode is the first of a series of challenges we must overcome to keep the dream alive. Did you see that? No. So jump on board, buckle up, subscribe and join us for another Combi Life adventure. Where are we off to today, Tamara? I believe the town of Lucea. Lucea? Lucea. What's in Lucea? Lucea is a cold city. There's always a question, inevitable question of will we get there? Why does it have to be like this? Just having a bit of a stock take on the parts that we have inside the Combi. Unfortunately, we've developed a problem. That's the bad news. The good news is we have the parts to fix it. Oh, and the other bad news is we kind of don't really have the tools to fix it. So it's going to be a bit of a MacGyver session. Currently very hot in northern Italy, 34 degrees and it's not even peak of summer. So I think if we had Alaska here, she'd really struggle with the heat. She's getting older. We have to protect her. I think it's the right decision to not have her with us at this time. We've got the blinds up, got the fans going and it's still mid 30s. Sat in Fahrenheit. Yeah, that's hot. Peter Pan did that. The following day. OK, so we were going to Lucea for something very important. A skinny dipping. And then let me tell you, it was this small afterwards. It was like this. Very embarrassingly, we came out of the water and puked our clothes. Oh my God, yes. That fear of going skinny dipping and then coming out and someone having stolen your clothes. And it was a full two minutes of us searching up and down the beach in the pitch black. We didn't have our phones. We didn't have anything with us. Literally just our clothes and a towel. Yeah, and I seriously thought that we'd be walking back to the cockpit naked through the towel. It's easier for you to come with your son. You just got a cup. How do I go? A big cup, like two hands. A lot to cover. This time we are actually heading to Lucea. First of all, we just need to check into our hotel. There we go. All checked in. We've got some mechanical issues that we need to investigate. It's pretty hot at the moment in Italy. We need to find some shade. We found a nice, beautiful car park. Beautiful. Well, it's beautiful because the surface is good. Found a good place to do it. We just need to make sure that we're not going to roast in tomorrow's sun because it was super hot today. So I can track the sun using this app. I think it's called Sun Surveyor Light. Pretty useful. Talked about it before for tracking solar. I think if we park behind that tree, but flip the car around, we should have enough shade throughout the day to do the job because I don't know how long this is going to take. I've got to be honest, of all the places I've ever been... And me. ...the Italians have got to be the best dressed. They are so stylish. I feel kind of underdressed when I'm around here. Look at this. This is van life attire. But I think that we should get dressed up and pretend we're Italian and go out for dinner. What do you say? Meanwhile, I'm getting ready. I'm not sure I brought any date clothes. That looks like date wear. I need to find an appropriate top. Oh, like that. You want this one? Just like that. I think I've got something. I thought I wasn't going to have a top suitable for going out for dinner with you. Is this okay? Oh, the best. Not really got the date clothes. This one, this one, hottie. I just came prepared, that's all. Bonafide hottie. Me, not so much. I'm going to have to brush up a little bit. I haven't even had a shower today. What's this secret ingredient? It's dry shampoo. Basically. You do this after you've got dressed? That sounds like a recipe for disaster. I mean, yes, and look, after I did my makeup as well. Exactly. I know it should have been beforehand, but you were kind of in my way. So I made do, made do with the space that I had and I got on with other chores. It's van life way, isn't it? Those of you that said we need a bigger van, shut up. What do you think, date ready? I would take you out and then I would take you home to a car park. Lucky girl. To a car park, oh la la. Starving. Oh, I can't wait. Should we go find some food? I'm thinking pasta, pizza, some other kind of Italiana. All the carbs, everything. Cheers. I've gone for a beer. You've gone for a Long Island iced tea. Salute. A bag of bread whilst you're doing it. Oh, it's pretty good. No plates. I've gone for the pizza, because Italy. And Tamara's gone for the local delicacy, meaty cheesy thing, which looks incredible. Good job this isn't a food show. So like artichokes, parmesan, some raw beef. Is it good? It does look good actually. Is it raw? Hands up, who wants unlimited data? Yeah, that'll be me. And it might just be you, because if you love traveling, you're a digital nomad like us, or you're studying and working abroad. There is an awesome new data solution that we've started using called Holify Plans. Holify offers international eSIMs and it's been on the market for years. They've already sold more than 10 million eSIMs. And now they've just launched Holify Plans, which is their new monthly subscription. And it is so simple. You just choose between Lite, which gives you 25 gigabytes of data a month, or our personal favorite, the unlimited plan. Finally, an unlimited data plan for travel, which gives us a hassle-free connection wherever we go. The key difference with Holify Plans is that it gives us a reliable data connection in over 160 countries, all under one monthly plan, which automatically renews so we never have to worry about it. And we can cancel any time that our travel plans change. So convenient. No more top-ups when we run out of data. No more picking the dates of travel when we change location. No more calling our carrier to arrange a roaming solution. It's all done with Holify Plans. And we can even hotspot our data to other devices from our Holify connection. Because Holify is an eSIM, we've got it pre-installed and it works directly when we cross the border. So we don't have to worry about how to navigate foreign roads when we arrive at a new destination. There's also no more searching for Wi-Fi to activate an account. Nor do we have to shop for physical SIM cards. Man, what a hassle that was. So if you want fast, reliable internet wherever the road takes you, check out Holify. It's one of those travel companion apps that's worth having installed on your phone. I will leave a link below the like button and you can check it out. There is a 10% discount off 12-month Holify Plans with the code COMBILIFE. Thanks so much to Holify and thanks to you guys. This challenge is going to be either really easy or really hard to resolve. Here we go again. You see, our wheel currently sounds like it's about to fall off. I don't know exactly what's going on, but there's a chance that trying to outrun the Italian Navy up a bumpy mountain could have something to do with it. We've got the army coming up behind us in their 4x4. It's a modern white 4x4 and I'm determined to beat them up this bumpy track. Not that they know it. No, they don't know they're racing, but they're racing. Anyway, van life is about being resourceful. So let's see if we can solve the problem. And have a good time in the process. I did say check the back box, didn't I? We found them! I was so upset when I thought I lost these spanners. So upset when I had to go to Leclerc in France and buy some emergency spanners for £14.99, which were disgusting. We found them! Yay! What were they doing back there? You had rearranged everything and I said to you, check the back box. You were like, no, I've just done it. There's no blame in this relationship, but we are having a few issues with things being moved around for this trip. Rubber gloves for him. Rubber gloves for her. And again. Here we go. Pamela explicitly said that if we have an issue in the first week of this trip, we have to turn around and go back. And I agreed to this. So I said when this issue happened on day five, that we would fix it on Sunday. Clever boy. Talking about women who can, I have learned how to use a shiwi now. When you take out the shiwi, this part goes inside like this. That makes me feel super empowered. It means that Ben and I can stay wherever we want to stay. We don't have to leave early in the morning so that we can go find a toilet, which is presumably what happened with a couple, a young couple that we saw this morning in a much smaller van than ours. And in fact, it means that I can actually get up at a toilet without having to ask Ben to move the entire Kombi. And so as you can see, it works a treat. Kind of looks like I might need some more water though. It's rather nice and shaded here, Ben. I wonder why. Oh, you got it all covered, eh? I use technology. Right, so we should top that up a little bit. That should do it. And the other thing to check, fan belt. Make sure it's not too loose. That feels good. And then whilst we're already here, make sure there are no petrol leaks. So we've got one here. Nothing there. No spray pattern, no drip pattern. That's nice and tight. We've got two more back there. No spray pattern at the back. No drip patterns. And they're not moving. Last one, this side. Nothing to show a leak. Looks good. Jesus, that's a bigger than mine. You just lie down here on this mat in the shade all day. That'd be nice. We really need a way to get this massive nut off. These ones, which are often quite tight and hard to get off, are about 90 foot pounds. OK. This one is 246 foot pounds. So we're not going to be able to do that with standard tools. Because we don't, we have a torque wrench. Yeah, but that won't get that off. We've got a breaker bar, but that will probably not work either. So we need something like a big long pole or something. I don't know. You can have a look and see if you can find something. I don't know. Yeah, big fat metal pole. Good luck. It's not very likely that you'll find one. You always give me the challenges, don't you? Did you mean something like this? What the hell is, where did you get that from? Is it heavy? A wee bit. It's literally perfect. Yeah, it's well heavy. Only thumbnail right here. OK, back to you now. Time to get the car jacked up. Come on. All right, cheeky. Let's go. When I say, stop there. OK, now you can lower slowly. OK, ready? Please. Ready? Yeah. Is that good? Stop. Wheel off? Wheel off. Come on. Can you see that? Can you see how much that's wobbling? That is not good. Something's majorly wrong. This is the big axle nut that should be tight. Really, really tight. We have a big socket to get that off. But as you can see, it's really loose. First thing we're going to try is put this back together. And try to tighten it as much as we can. And then jack it back up and see if the play has gone. And if not, we'll have to do a bearing job. But we'll try to tighten it first. It's important when you're tightening these, that you're doing it in opposite. So we've done this one and this one. Now we're doing this one and this one. And then this one will be last. Are you telling me I slacked on my job? Yeah, when you let a man do a woman's job. What the hell is this? The issue with this next part is that we don't have a torque wrench. Which can get to the 246 foot pounds required. So how much do you weigh? About 47 kilograms. Is that the real answer or is that the YouTube answer? That's the real answer. Okay, I'm about 85 kilograms. This is definitely the YouTube answer. All right, there's one foot. Actually, let's do this and see if we can do this with just your weight. 47. It's going to give us 103 foot pounds. And we need 246. So we need two and a half feet for you. Can you manage that? Yeah. Can you man-age that? I can woman-age it. I'll just shut up. I'm going to stand closer than that at first and work my way towards two and a half foot pounds. With this size pole, it's really easy to break the tools that we have. So we have to be careful. Just be prepared that that could all fall, okay? It could snap and fall. Do you want to fall in flip-flops or barefoot? Okay, and I just keep walking back. Right, that should be 246 foot pounds. That's so cool. So that's as tight as the bolt can go, basically. We'll know whether this fixed it now by jacking it up again. Giving it a wobble. Fingers crossed. Okay, so the good news is Tamara's weight has successfully tightened this nut to what we need it to be. It's taken, I'd say, 90% of the play out of it. I think the best thing at this point is to just go for a test drive and see if it's fixed the problem. Let me know if you hear something. You hear anything? The very faintest shh, shh, shh. Very, very, very faint. Can you hear anything? I couldn't hear anything. I think you fixed it. I fixed it? You fixed it. Well, you were the one with the supplying all the weight to tighten the nut and the nut was the issue. I'll give you one of these. Nice work. The wind caught my hair. I was leaning back. I was in the sun. You're not supposed to be enjoying yourself. That was for science. Yeah, okay. Okay, so we're good. We can hit the road. Nice one. Come on. Good job. Let's go traveling. Look at that view. Beautiful view. No, not me. We fell asleep with all the curtains open. Which we don't get to do very often. No, it's not often you just know that nobody's going to come past. You can just sleep naked with the windows open. But there was like beautiful stars last night. We're just lying here. Hear the crickets chirping. This, this is bad luck. Can't complain. Greetings from Tuscany. Hello, or should we say buongiorno? Buongiorno. It is so beautiful in Tuscany. Honestly, we have scored the perfect camp spot. 100%. We are parked in all of these vineyards here. That's been pretty special. Showering under the stars last night and having all of these, these rolling Tuscan hills as our backdrop. What's happening here, Ben? Is this another modification? What's this? Our removable velcro mirror. Just perfect. Just keeps getting better and better. Definitely better than sleeping in a car park, isn't it? 100%. And you know what? There's internet here too. So we have had the best work view all day. How are you liking your desk? I love this new desk. Clearly a place of comfort. Also an excellent view outside. What a brilliant office it's been today. Honestly, it's been so warm, but not too warm. It's just that perfect temperature. You've already said once at least, like, have we thought about homesteading in Italy? That would be the dream. But you know what? The fact that we get to explore Italy in the first place. Yeah. Get in. Look at this. Sunset in the vineyards in Tuscany. Beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous. My God. Very nice to be in Italy, isn't it? Beautiful. I could honestly stay here for forever, but we've got some exploring to do. So... And some wine to drink. That's actually Chianti. And these are actually Chianti grapes. Yeah, very fitting. Look at you right now. Eating and drinking grapes. I know. Doesn't get better than this. Yeah, I'm a happy gal right now. Life goals. There's a constant kind of conversation in the background of combi life when we're going along. What will the next vehicle be like? How could we upgrade Boomerang? Would we go electric? Would we have a Subaru conversion? All of these things. We don't stop talking, to be honest. No, it comes up every other day. Will we keep Boomerang? It's hard to, like, not keep them. Really? Already so many memories and... Yeah, but... Attached. I'm attached already. How can you not love Boomerang? I know, yeah. It is fun. There's no doubt that the love we have for our combi is strong, but it's not supposed to be about the vehicle. Van life is supposed to be about the journey. Exploring and living our lives nomadically so we can wake up to views like this. Often we are lucky enough to find ourselves in paradise and occasionally we get stuck there. But that is a story for next time.