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After grabbing a towel and cleaning myself up, I put on my flannel sleep shorts and oversized hoodie before flopping back in bed. I’m ready for a nap while I enjoy my post-orgasm, post-day-in-the-office bliss.

Yes, I will have to edit and post that video later and do some chatting with my subs, but that can wait. I want to enjoy this feeling as long as I can, which is what I plan to do when I curl up into my bed and pull the covers over me. My eyes begin to flutter shut under the comfort of my weighted blanket—one of my life necessities if I want to get any real sleep. A smile spreads across my face because this is the kind of work-life balance and freedom I couldn’t live without.

Thunk.

The sound of a dull thud on the side of the van causes my eyes to fly back open. I groan and toss my head against my pillow. I know that sound—the freaking knock—the bane of all van lifers. There’s a ninety-nine percent chance that it’s a park ranger giving me the subtle and polite cue that I’ve overstayed my welcome. I’m in a secluded part of the National Park, but camping is allowed here. Have I stayed a day or two longer than I’m supposed to? Yeah, but it’s not the busy season here in southern Colorado. Normally, no one cares enough to enforce those rules. Most of the time, they’ll leave it at the knock, and go on their way, hoping campers take the unspoken cue to find another place to stay.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll get on the road in a bit,” I call out, hoping the overzealous park ranger will move on and let me take my time to pack up my van and leave.

I rub my eyes and look around the van, thinking about what I need to take care of before getting on the road. I might be a van-dwelling nomad, but I keep my home neat and tidy. This is the second van I’ve owned since I started living on the road almost a decade ago. I like to think of my first van as my starter home and this one as my dream home. When I built it, I took all my experience from the first van I rented, and later bought, and used those lessons to design this one. Beyond my queen-size bed, there were a few things I knew I needed. A compact kitchenette with a small fridge, sink, single-burner stove top, and a toaster oven were a must. I have a small shower that also can double as a place to hang my wet clothing, especially ski gear in the winter. I even have a cozy two-person dinette where the table can fold down and be turned into a daybed where I like to read, or maybe do other things if I want to change it up and shoot somewhere besides my bed.

I also made sure I have plenty of attachment points around the van to hang curtains or my backdrop. Not only does the backdrop I always use in my videos help with lighting, it’s also an added security measure because it makes it much harder to tell where I actually am in my videos.

Most of all, when I built this van, I made sure that I had plenty of cabinets and cubbies that could be packed up and secured quickly. The last thing I want to do is have all my things shaking loose and flying around in my van every time I hit a bump in the road. Looking around at the bright, airy interior of my van with the light wood-paneled ceiling and white cabinets I still love, a pleased grin spreads across my face. I’ve done a good job of keeping things in order over my last few days at this spot, and I should be able to pack up and get going in less than an hour.

Take that, Mom and Dad. I still hear their voices from my childhood telling me to clean up my pigsty of a room. Who would have thought that all it would take for me to learn to keep my space clean was to spend years living in an eighty-square-foot van?

Something about that seems oddly fitting—or maybe even ironic—considering they spent a handful of those years living in prison cells that were probably the same size. I don’t particularly care. I haven’t talked to them in years and don’t plan on changing that anytime soon. That’s a problem for another day—or month, or year, or maybe even never—because right now, I have a van to pack up.

I wriggle out from under my weighted blanket and toss my legs over the side of the bed. When I stand up, I hear another dull thunk on the side of my van, and this time, the whole vehicle shakes enough that I have to grab onto the cabinets to brace myself. The van shakes once more before finally coming to a rest.

Holy shit. Overzealous doesn’t do this ranger justice. He could just leave a note or a parking ticket, not try to capsize my whole van to get my attention.

After steadying myself on my wobbly legs, I make my way to the sliding door. I’m ready to give him a piece of my mind. I don’t care that I’m all of five-foot-three on a good day, and still in my pajamas, this ranger needs a reality check.

Not even bothering to pull back my window shades, I tug the handle and start sliding open the side door, letting the electric opener assist it the rest of the way. That gives me time to get my hackles raised and be ready to lay into this guy.

“Seriously, do you mind? Some of us like some peace and quiet during the day to sleep.” Or pleasure themselves, on camera—for tips—but who’s really keeping score on how we like to spend our Friday mornings?

As the door continues to open wide, I’m not greeted by some goody-two-shoes park ranger. Instead, like a slow-motion horror movie, the door creeps open, and the entire frame is filled with a looming black figure. A second later, the door is fully open, and there is a giant fucking black bear right outside my van, knocking over my folding camp chair.

I let out an ear-splitting squeal, and it turns around to look at me, standing on its hind legs. My hand flies to my mouth, and I try to swallow the sound because I am now almost face-to-face with the giant bear.

I know people say that black bears are less dangerous than grizzly bears, and they’re probably right, but testing out that theory seems like a luxury right now. Suddenly, I do in fact care that I’m five-foot-three, alone in my van, and in my pajamas.

“Shit, shit, shit.” I regain a semblance of my composure and start to pull the door shut and curse myself for choosing the upgraded automatic door assist when it kicks in again, closing the door at a snail’s pace. My heart races, but my instincts kick in. I blindly fumble around in the cabinet next to the door until my hands feel the cool metallic cylinder that I know is a can of bear spray.

I grab the can and flip off the cap, extending an arm in front of me, ready to spray it just as the door closes. The reassuring mechanical click sound tells me that the door is securely shut, and I close my eyes, letting out the breath I was holding.

Freaking hell. My best friend Grace always says that the universe has a way of telling us things. Right now, I kind of believe her. The universe is definitely giving me some strong move on vibes, just in bear form, not park ranger form. I take another steadying breath and pull back my window shade to see—from the safety of my van—if the bear is still out there.

The bear is indeed still there. I watch it flip my camp chair over with its big, boopable, and friend-shaped-murder-snout. That’s when I see an Earth SnaX protein bar fall out of the pocket on the arm of the chair.

I groan and drop my head. Damn it. Normally, I’m diligent about being bear aware and not leaving any food at my campsites. They generally avoid humans like the plague, unless you give them a reason to come around—like food. I can hear my parents’ voices saying ‘I told you so’ or some other snide comment about picking up after myself, because I clearly forgot I left a snack bar in my chair.

Yeah, I’m starting to think Grace is right. Maybe I do need to listen to the universe and move along to my next adventure. Our traditional end-of-August meet-up was supposed to be at a Northern California music festival that Grace hasn’t been to before—until it got cancelled because of wildfires. So, instead, we’ve planned on meeting up at another one further south a month from now. I guess it’s time to start making my way across the American Southwest. There are plenty of worthwhile places to stop along the way.

The tow truck hits another pothole and bumps me up into the air off the passenger seat. My phone falls from my hand onto the bench seat, and I grab the dash to brace myself. My van doesn’t exactly have the most comfortable ride, considering it’s a converted cargo van after all, but it feels downright luxurious compared to the ride in this old ass truck.

Either way, riding along in the passenger seat with my van strapped down to the flatbed of a tow truck was not what I had in mind when I packed up and left Colorado this morning. I made it all of five hours, just crossing into northern New Mexico on my way to White Sands National Park, before my van’s transmission started to overheat.

I’ve had my van long enough to know what I can fix myself and what I can’t. Whatever is going on with my transmission is far beyond my capacity to fix. So, I gave in and called roadside assistance, and that’s how I ended up in Frank, or Fred, or whoever’s truck on my way to the nearest town.

We hit another bump, this one even larger than the last, and I swear my teeth chatter. I peek over my shoulder to check on my van, fully aware that basically my whole home is held down with a handful of straps.

Whatever his name is—I’m going with Fred at this point—chuckles. “Don’t worry, it’s strapped down. This ain’t the first time I’ve towed one of those vans.”

“Thanks,” I reply, reaching for my phone on the bench seat between us. His eyes track the movement and linger on the tattoo on my thigh for a second before he looks at the van.