Staying Glamorous in Vanlife

Since the new year, I have stepped up my game at the gym. I’m up at 4:30am and in the gym by 5:00am. It’s the spin, the weights and machines, and then into the pool for what I call my “House Laps” with my waterproof MP3 player and then I hit the showers. I do this 5 days a week.

Swimming and color treated hair are an ever-changing experience. No matter what size swim cap you wear, your hair is going to get wet.  So, you need to condition and color your hair more often if you are a swimmer that washes her hair every day. The color fades fast. It costs $90 - $120 at the salon to have your hairdresser do this. 

How do you color your own hair when you live in a van full time and shower at a gym?

It’s too big a pain in ass to ask your friends if you can use their shower every 4 weeks. Last night I very carefully applied the hair color to my hair in the van while parked in the parking lot of my 24 hour gym. I waited 45 minutes and then wrapped up my head in a Durag and put a leopard print baseball cap on it and strutted my booty into the gym like a Harlem rapper. 

I was lucky enough to find a single private shower stall that did not share a drain with the shower next door. I got undressed, flung my clothes and the two clean towels over the tall shower door. There were about three other ladies in the shower room at the time.

I unwrapped my head and turned on the hot shower and began to rinse out the deep red auburn hair dye from my glorious soon to be mane.  Some got into my eyes and started to sting, so I rinsed it out as fast as I could and then opened my eyes and looked down at the tile floor.

It looked like a murder scene. Dark red spatters, dripping down the walls, the door and all over the place.  

Alfred Hitchcock would have been proud.  

It started to move out from under the shower door and into the public hallway.  Luckily, I was able to stop it with one of the towels. I washed it all out, cleaned up the shower stall well. I felt bad about that gym towel I dyed a nice dark pink color, but it was better than hearing screams from the woman near by at the terrifying sight of gallons of watered-down blood.

I got dried off and dressed, put the baseball cap back on it, and strolled out of that gym bathroom like a Queen.

If you are a glamorous person with high standards of personal hygiene, style, like to stay in shape and must always have fabulous hair...

YOU CAN STILL HAVE ALL THE GLAM IN VANLIFE.