Van Pan | My wife and kids regard our minivan like a bunch of hobos might treat a boxcar. This is how I get even…

Van Pan 2.0

By Dad | November 20, 2008

Note: Regular readers will note that this post marks a departure from the narrow niche that vanpan.com has historically dominated. With the unwinding of the US auto industry, the timing is right to expand the breadth of the site to address other vital, non-automotive topics.

I came home to find this interesting mixed media piece on the kitchen table:

It reminded me of the figurative maps that Charles Joseph Minard published in France in the mid-nineteenth century (especially the planning work he prepared in 1845 for the Dijon to Mulhouse railway project). See if you agree.

It is unfortunate that Play-Doh was not available to the talented Mr. Minard.

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HelloKittieMama: Preparing a 2000 Dodge Grand Caravan for the Funeral Pyre

By Dad | October 17, 2008

Like an aging French actress fading into oblivion, so it is as this faithful Grand Caravan that has seen more action than Omaha Beach makes way for the new Kia Sedona that will be taking its place…

In submitting her Van Pan Fan pics, HelloKittieMama (from The Bon Bon Gazette) had this to say:

“I’m almost embarrassed to send these.. but I know you understand completely!!!! I’m getting rid of my 2000 dodge grand caravan and my dad is getting me a new Kia Sedona fully loaded!!!! If they are too gross or too boring I understand LOL!”

I spent some time thinking about the range that her note implied: too gross or too boring. I had never juxtaposed these two terms, so taking a moment to depict it was helpful.

Have a look for yourself (this is the part of the show where we caution parents to avert the eyes of any young ones that might be lingering around at this late hour and shouldn’t be exposed to what is about to follow). I believe you will agree with me that HelloKittieMama not only deserves to be a Van Pan Fan, she also deserves a new van!

Honestly, it doesn’t start out too badly. This picture provides some context. Not too bad, really.

Interior of HelloKittieMama's 2000 Dodge Grand Caravan - lots of car seats...

The Grand Caravan has decent legroom - unless you load it up with a lot of junk that your kids have to crawl over…

At this point, you may be thinking something like, “sure, there are a few things on the floor, but not really any trash. “ I was thinking the same thing; be patient.

In this next shot, we see that HKM has taken the already state-of-the-art Dodge/Chrysler electronics package to the next level with this slick custom job.

Injered in an electrical fire? Call Christos!

Injured in an electrical fire inside a Dodge Grand Caravan? Call Christos!

Regarding the following photograph, HelloKittieMama had this to say: “Once I got the basket emptied I found lots of wires, change… I see a Gerber puff there fossilized. My daughter is 3.5 years old and hasn’t eaten those since she was under a year!”

HelloKittieMama has titled these next shots M&Ms and Corn! and Fossils Up Close.

Regarding M&Ms and Corn, she says “I see a corn kernel from LAST YEAR’s Trip to the pumpkin farm and corn maze. We haven’t gone yet for this year. Also, that is a blue M&M.”

Note how, over a long period of time, these little piles of party-colored-food dust have formed little drifts.

As is the case with most minivans, the 3rd row cup holder is where most of the action is. This theorem is not disproved by HelloKittieMama’s Grand Caravan…

HKM had this to say, “3rd row Cupholders. YUCK. Ok, I can see where a coin was stuck to the one cupholder. The blob is a gumball. My kids don’t know how to chew gum but they like the big gumball machines that you stick a quarter in and the gumball drops around and around a big ramp. The gumball has bubbles on it from the heat……”

I am intrigued by the comment “The gumball has bubbles on it from the heat……”. I’ve seen a lot of things, but I have never experienced heat be so intense as to sear the candy coating off of a gumball and cause the gum to bubble. HelloKittieMama must either live on Mercury or in an autoclave. Here we see another good example of the top notch design skills of the (Dodge) Chrysler Design Team. The rectangular storage compartment looks Chrysler Clean to me.

Fortunately, HelloKittieMama has provided a close up shot that captures both the sun-baked deliciousness of the gumball and the (flaking?) brown gunk.

And she was thinking we might find these pictures too gross or too boring - more like exactly right.

Please join me in welcoming HelloKittieMama as an official Van Pan Fan!

Farewell, 2000 Dodge Caravan!

7 Comments

2005 Chrysler Petri Dish

By Dad | September 18, 2008

As a child, I was always told that public places and objects were filthy - bathrooms, cabs, doors to restaurants, handrails, money, etc. A good follow-up question that might have better prepared me for my wife’s absolute disregard for how clean she keeps her minivan might have been, “Filthy relative to what?”

It has been noted many times here that fruit (bananas in particular) plays a large part in how Elizabeth uses the minivan. Fruit is tasty, travels fairly well and comes in its own wrapper. What’s not to like?

Well, for starters, I don’t like old fruit that has found its way into some Chrysler Crevice and become a pectin goo.

Take these two berries that made their way into the ashtray insert between the two front-seat cupholders. The geniuses at Chrysler’s design team had the foresight to make smoking an option (part number 0RS79BD5AA - ashtray smokers kit - gray); the geniuses in our family use the space as a petri dish.

I should confess that I had to remove a box of earplugs that have been riding in this space all summer and were hiding these beauties. There is some debate over what exactly these are. They could be cherries or crabapples - not sure which - in all honesty, does it really matter?

You will be glad to know that I replaced the box of earplugs after this photograph was taken in hopes of revisiting the cherriecrabapplesomething berries. Elizabeth may move them (riiighhtt…), but I would imagine that she would be learning about them for the first time if she happens to ever read this.

What I have shared with you so far is tame compared to what you are about to see. Seriously - by orders of magnitude.

Although prior stories have regularly included bananas (here and here), vanpan readers will be interested to learn that I am setting the nasty bar even higher. Benign shots like these offcast banana peels won’t make the cut in the future. I am certain that once you see what follows, you will also insist on something a little edgier going forward. Enjoy…

Until the technology exists, there unfortunately isn’t a way for you to smell this bad boy. To orient yourself, this deal went down right here:

Check out the syrupy ooze seeping onto the floor. I couldn’t help but flip it over to reveal this:

What was I thinking…

You’d only get this here. Vanpan.com - not just a website; a cry for help.

9 Comments

Can’t You Smell That Smell…

By Dad | August 25, 2008

No whiskey bottles or brand new cars here. Just a nasty section of carpet that smells so bad that it can drop a grown man from 30 yards.

This is the way it really is, people - no ropes, mirrors, pulleys or tricks here. I just hope the brightly-colored candy-looking things didn’t end up in a mouth.

This is pretty much the kind of nastiness that vanpan readers have come to expect.

3 Comments

Mrsbear Becomes Latest Van Pan Fan! Check Out This Mess of an Odyssey…

By Dad | August 18, 2008

Mrsbear from Outnumbered Two to One has gained acceptance into the prestigious Van Pan Fan program!

The three fantastic pics she submitted really speak for themselves. My wife, Elizabeth from Three Channels, had this to say after glimpsing them for the first time, “It looks so familiar - I would think it was my van except the outside of the cupholder was a little too clean.” Mrsbear has raised the bar in a big way with this entry!

(ADD Moment: Even though the Van Pan Fan program is still in its infancy, it has experienced triple-digit-growth over the past week alone. Amazing.)

Enjoy these nice shots - you can almost smell the cupholder. Mrsbear’s own comments follow:

“We’re a family of six, four kids packed into the back of our 2002 Honda Odyssey where there are always snacks and drinks being handled and mishandled. I was vacuuming the van out today (which I do…every six months or so) and thought I’d send the before shots your way.

For the most part the family vehicle is a cluttered stinky mess, although it’s achieved nowhere near the status of your Town and Country. We keep a tiny square garbage satchel hooked to the back of the passenger seat, but it routinely overflows so that the children resort to using the cupholders as trash receptacles. There’s never an available cupholder when you need one. Since we have a portable DVD player, there are always movies strewn under the seats, the discs inside never matching the title on the box. I also discovered a single goldfish cracker and a shriveled french fry looking forlorn beneath the center console. I put them out of their misery, but I hope you can help their legacy live on.”

- Mrsbear

Thank you Mrsbear, and congratulations! It’s a good thing you documented your van funk before cleaning it out for the school year!

3 Comments

We Have a Winner! Andrew Bowman Becomes First Official “Van Pan Fan”!

By Dad | August 13, 2008

Today marks another important and historic milestone for vanpan.com — subscriber and commenter Andrew Bowman has become the very first Van Pan Fan.

Andrew was uneasy as to whether or not he would meet the tough entry criteria because, as he said, “my wife’s car is really clean.”

Here is the shot that Andrew submitted. His comments follow:

“Our car isn’t particularly messy, but I’m often surprised at what I find in the car. Today it was fluorescent pink Play-Doh.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring? A Winged Nike of Samothrace made of food scraps? Albrecht Durer’s Seven Sorrows of the Virgin done in crayon and construction paper? Probably not. Most likely a handful of partially pulverized whole wheat goldfish.”

- Andrew Bowman

[Note to future Van Pan Fan wannabes: You're going to have to top this. Andrew hasn't exactly set a very high bar here with this one. Some play-doh shrapnel and a solitary pinestraw needle are a little tame compared to the squalor that I know readers are accustomed to. His picture makes me want to ride in his car and spill something. Or, for greater damage, see if he could give any one of my three kids a ride someplace.]

Check out Andrew’s unusual web site: andrewbowman.com (it’s the only one like it!).

Congratulations, again, to Andrew for this amazing achievement. I will have to come up with a sticker or something to send him so he can plaster it on his wife’s vehicle and do a little marketing for me. (In this business you have to always be thinking - always staying one step ahead of the competition.)

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Press Release: Vanpan.com Shatters Initial SEO Goal for Term “Crappy Chrysler”

By Dad | August 12, 2008

***** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE *****

August 12, 2008 - Vanpan.com, a website with a singular purpose of documenting the filth that the wife of vanpan.com’s operator and their three small kids have brought upon a 2005 Chrysler Town and Country Limited, has reached an SEO milestone today, having become Google’s 22nd highest returned result for a search of the term “crappy Chrylser”.

When met with this success, Dad from vanpan.com had this to say: “This is too much - really. I just feel like I’m riding some wave of the obvious. ‘Crappy’ and ‘Chrysler’ were already the automotive industry’s ‘burger and fries’ or ‘Captain and Tenille’ long before I got here. I have very little to do with the success that vanpan has enjoyed. You take either the Chrysler design team or my wife and kids out of this picture and this site’s got nothing. Nothing.”

He continued, “Sure, we’re working from a big picture here. We obviously reached this milestone much earlier than anticipated, but am I surprised? No.”

“We’ll announce some new, more aggressive goals, but in the meantime, suffice it to say that it’s exciting to be part of something so big - so successful.”

“A lot of people approach me who want to be part of the vanpan story. I try to point them to the Van Pan Fans offering, which I think you’d have to agree is a fantastic way to not only participate, but to also add value.”

“Today, I just want to celebrate how far we’ve come with the “crappy Chrysler” search term. We could do some other things - take “crappy penetration” - we’re a top-5 search result there, and I think that surprises a lot of people…”

“… but that isn’t a direction I feel we need to take the brand at the moment.”

“We can’t let the excitement of today’s story be a distraction. We’re going to have some fun with it for now, but tomorrow we’ll be right back where we like to be - hammering away at the aggressive and important targets we’ve set. Ultimately, it’s about focus, ideas and energy. And in our case, some filth.”

1 Comment

Clean by Design: “Chrysler Clean”

By Dad | August 10, 2008

I don’t have too many words for tonight’s picture. Usually I post these smallish little pictures - not tonight. I present now in full 640×480 glory this spectacular rear-passenger-side storage bin…

What strikes me as odd about this picture isn’t the partially eaten and now abandoned organic fruit roll up ($$$) - it’s how dry all that other food dust looks. You will rarely see this compartment so arid. It usually looks more like the one on the driver’s side:

This couldn’t have gotten this way in just a day or two. “More sprinkles, please.”

Note how the drifts of food and other debris have gotten trapped in the gooey base. I can also see that a hair has gotten trapped down there; who knows - if it still has a follicle, it may become an important future paleontological find here in the La Brea Storage Bin.

[ADD Aside: What were the geniuses at Chrysler thinking when they designed this little storage area, anyway. It couldn't have been too tough for their crack market research team to conclude who drives these things. "Oh, gee - you know, we need to make sure to build in a storage compartment way back there on the driver's side so folks can store either a deck of cards or one of those old metal cans of Curad bandaids, don't ya think?"

Here is a crude diagram that contrasts how far off the mark Chrysler strayed in the design of this one feature, just from the perspective of keeping it vacuumed out. "A" depicts the ideal penetration you would want from a vacuuum cleaner wand if you were trying to clean out a built-in storage compartment. "B", on the other hand, shows the forward thinking that has typified Chrysler's design team - we'll call this really crappy penetration "Chrysler Clean".

By the way, if you're thinking I just don't get it and the space was intended to hold a juice-box - refer to illustration "B".]

My hope was to return to the van a few days later armed with the blower to check on the fruit roll-up (I wanted to give it several good days in the upper 90s / low 100s to “ripen”) I have not had good luck blowing sticky objects out of the van and I wanted to give it another shot - unfortunately, it was gone. I am assuming she cleaned it up; surely no one ate it.

3 Comments

Bananas, Part 2… Keep Hope Alive

By Dad | August 2, 2008

Well, time and heat have colluded to bring about the inevitable - turn the van into a slow kiln that has reduced last week’s banana peels into something that reminds me of the mummified skin of some ancient pharaoh.

I was able to get these pictures before she cleaned out the van. [Observation: normally she (reluctantly) asks me to clean out the van, unless a member of her family will be coming into town. She makes absolutely certain that the van is clean if one of her relatives will be here. This itself is a double-edged deal for me, though; clean out the van vs. deal with in-laws: not an easy call.]

One thing I’ve always wondered about banana peels (and other fruit, for that matter) is whether or not it’s okay to throw the peels out the window. You hardly ever see anybody toss junk out of their car these days - and, after all, a banana peel is an organic product that will decompose. On the other hand, it would really suck to get that crying Indian worked up again. He shed enough tears over flying jugs of urine from 1970’s roadtrips.

Regular visitors will almost certainly remember this old friend - still hiding out under the front passenger seat with the discarded McDonald’s hamburger bun from July 14th - except now joined by a pair of dirty, red-plaid, boy’s boxer shorts. (We do have a six-year old who is a regular “commando”, so I’m probably a little desensitized as to how unusual the cast-off underwear might ordinarily be.)

I am sad to report that my wife claims that during her “thorough cleaning of the van” in preparation for her previously-mentioned guests, that she “got rid of the bun”. There were four, so the fact that she described a single bun lets me keep hope alive…

2 Comments

After the Bananas Leave Honduras, They End Up in My Wife’s Van

By Dad | July 29, 2008

I spend a lot of money buying bananas. You might assume this means I eat a lot of bananas, but you would be wrong - they’re mostly in her van.

The banana is wildly popular among our children and is convenient for my wife. It travels sort-of well (i.e. - it doesn’t need to be refrigerated and comes in its own wrapper). This picture depicts a pair of bananas beside the driver’s seat, ready to be thrown back to hungry passengers.

The trouble is, the banana peels don’t often make their way out of the van. There is something like a trade imbalance occurring as these pictures (all taken today) attest:

[Bonus Material: Did you notice anything unusual about the third picture? The hamburger bun. These hamburger buns showed up two weeks ago and they are still under the front passenger seat. Remarkably, they don't appear much different today than they did on July 14th. See for yourself:

One of our children - a lover of the banana - is on the GF/CF diet. Consequently, he cannot eat most breads, including typical fast-food hamburger buns. Therefore, whenever my wife whips the van through a ~~drive-through~~ (this looks funny - I guess this is one more thing that has been dumbed down) drive-thru, she orders a plain hamburger and casts the bun aside. This is no doubt what happened here. It appears that the only thing that has really changed in the meantime is that the buns have retreated a little further under the seat. I will continue to monitor these buns and provide updates if warranted.]

Lastly, an answer to the question “What happens to a banana peel after it has been left in a vehicle for a considerable time?”