The ice formed on the outside of the bottle of Molson beer inside the van, which Mike Blair had parked for the night in a vacant lot in Denver.
He had changed from his business suit into thermal underwear, a sweatsuit, a turtleneck and a neck warmer and was sitting with his German shepherd, Darth, on the bed that can be made into a dinette, watching “Twins’, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.
He keeps the beer in the refrigerator because it freezes when he leaves it out. He once had to wait two weeks for a bottle of cabernet sauvignon to thaw.
That day, he had closed a deal to sell a woman a BMW 325i for $38,000, so he turned up the thermostat to 30 degrees.
“Look at this,” he said. “Another advantage of being one of the mobile homeless. How many people can sit around with a beer at home and never worry about it getting warm?”
Blair is 43, and it has been five years since he moved from an 1890 Victorian house into a 1985 Ford Camper Van that is anywhere he wants to be.
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He has sold BMWs for eight years. Last year, he made $50,000.
He paid $3,500 for the van, and now he is 228,252 miles from the way he used to live.
His biggest worry is signs that say “Low Clearance.”
“Toilet paper, shampoo?” he said. “Haven’t bought it in five years. Ask me the last time I ran out of hot water or clean towels-I can almost give you the date.”
In 1979, he bought a six-bedroom house for $72,000. He spent $40,000 fixing it up. He got signatures on petitions to get street lights and alley lights, and started a Neighborhood Watch.
He decided to sell in 1987, because he was calling the police every night. While he talked to a realty agent, a drug dealer was shot three times in the street. He sold the house in 1990 for $61,250 and put everything in storage except Darth and his sleeping bag.
Now, he decides each night where he will wake up to the sunrise-or the police officers’ flashlights.
“I drive past my old house sometimes and wonder how I used to live like that,” he said. “If a neighborhood goes bad on me, I change neighborhoods. My biggest worries are finding a level parking space close to a bathroom.”
In the morning, he would start the van, scrape the windows inside, and go outside and hit tennis balls for Darth to chase. He would go to the YMCA and swim 700 yards, sit in the hot tub and shower. He would go to work, plug the batteries into an outlet, change into his suit and sell people on the advantages of owning a BMW.
“There is one other difficult thing about this lifestyle,” he said. “You have to separate when it’s a home and when it’s a vehicle. I always take the keys out of the ignition before I take a drink.
“On the other hand, I did get lucky and catch myself the time I was driving on I-70 and decided to step into the kitchen for some pretzels.”