AEONrv #98

15 November 2025

On the one month anniversary of taking delivery of AEONrv #98 - I am finally getting around to write a little. AEONrv is the name of a little start-up company that built our motorhome. The guy who started the company was trying to buy a rig himself, was unhappy with the existing offerings, and decided to design and build one instead. This turned into a company, which he named AEON: All Season, Electric Cabin, Off-Road and Off-Grid, and New. It’s basically an insulated box sitting on a cut-away Ford Transit chassis, and looks a bit like a delivery van if you don’t look too closely. The Ford Transit is gasoline powered. Everything else is electric, and between the solar panels and lithium batteries, it’s meant to be entirely off-grid. There are now 100 identical rigs out in the wild. We were the 98th. 

I’m surprised at how busy I am. Driving 400 miles a day takes all day! I thought I’d have lazy mornings at the campsite. I thought I’d write in my journal, and read all my back issues of the Journal of Urology. I thought I’d have hours to catch up on the phone with friends and family. But on driving days, we’re up and on the move. Yet we don’t arrive to camp until the sun has set, and it’s a rush to get dinner cooked and showers in. It’s kind of rushed slow travel, if that makes sense.

We've rented RVs a half a dozen times in the past. Different models, different styles. Mostly class B campervans. So we have a little bit of an idea of what RV life means. It's very nice to be able to set up this tiny-home-on-wheels as our own space. I can put hooks where I need them, and outfit the queen sized bed with the nicest bespoke bedding. But now it's our problem how to store the rig in between trips, and to deal with the surprisingly long list of appliances and systems that require regular maintenance.

The RV community, especially the AEONrv community, is fantastic. People will share a beer, shoot the shit, trade traveling tips, help you troubleshoot a problem, build you a custom shelf, or invite you to park on their private land. It's humanity at its most generous and trusting.

This lifestyle is both everything I ever imagined, and everything I ever imagined. Meaning, I imagined it would be freedom, spontaneity, and adventure. And it is! I also imagined that it would be a never-ending series of minor and major mechanical issues and way too many trips to Target and Home Depot. And surely it is that too.

There are discomforts of itinerant life. For example, you don’t really think about your trash until you have no where to throw it out. It makes me so thankful for public waste departments and the sanitation workers that collect my trash at home. On the road, there’s no putting the trash out on Mondays. We find public dumpsters (rare), or pay for a campsite that has trash service. Sometimes we can throw  a small bag away at the highway rest stop, or at the gas station. Often, there’s just a pile of trash bags in the rig until I figure out what to do with it.

I was grateful to arrive home, with its trash service and unlimited hot water. But it wasn't long - 2 weeks, to be precise - before I was eager to be on the road again. The itinerant RV life is simple and meditative - addictive, some would say. 

We rise an hour before sunrise, because that’s when nature wakes. We sleep soon after dark, which is well before 7pm this time of year in the Pacific Northwest. We are mindful of the sun for the solar power, and of the levels of the fresh and gray water tanks. We eat what we have on board. We take walks on trails, lanes, and industrial parks, whatever is next to our campsites. We have long meandering conversations as the mile markers go by. We listen to way too much Taylor Swift. Every night is a new place, yet a familiar routine.