In early May, my group of bestie girlfriends from college picked a date and location for our next reunion – June 6 in Kansas City, MO. For the first time in five years, all six of us would be together!

There was no way I was going to miss this trip, and it became the perfect deadline for us to leave. A real deadline, not a “we’ll see how the van build is going” estimated date, but a real deadline. We backtracked a bit from that date to give us some driving time, and June 3^rd became our official departure date.

One month. We could do that, right? Finish the cabinetry, walls, flooring, and 110-volt wiring. Design and install the solar roof rack, add the ceiling panels and mount the projector. Also, pack up all our belongings and clean up the mess we made in my parents’ house. All of this, and also plan a goodbye bonfire get-together for all our friends?

Yeah, we had our doubts too. It was a rough month – the pace, the deadline pressure, deciding what had to be done vs. what could be vs. what we would do on the road. All of the ‘indulgences’ that we took earlier in the build, such as ending our nights with a couple of beers and a movie in bed, we no longer had the time for.

But on the bright side, as things go whenever it gets down to the wire, we were incredibly focused and in sync. Big things were happening now, getting completed now. The solar set up was the biggest thing we had yet to even start on, yet somehow Jon was able to pull it together in about 10 days! With some welding help from a friend, he designed, wired and mounted all the solar panels. With just a week before departure, we now had free, natural power going into our batteries. It was a big turning point.

Towards the end, we gave ourselves more room to celebrate. Our bonfire had 30+ of our friends and colleagues checking out our van, wishing us luck and catching up on the past four months that we’d been largely out of touch with the rest of our lives. We had a date night to (what else but) BBQ to celebrate our impending departure date, easing off the van build gas pedal a bit. We had done it!