Vic & Max Are Living in a Sprinter Van for a 2.5 Week Road Trip!

The following podcast is a deer media production. Welcome to RealPod. It's your host Victoria Garrick Brown and this is the podcast where we hold nothing back. Oh, so we're getting deep, huh? I really cried for 12 days straight. Why do I want to be perfect? There's nothing in my life that is perfect. Every week I'll bring you honest, unfiltered and eye-opening conversations to help uncover the real in all of us. I crave the type of content that you're talking about. I actually felt insecure. Oh, my God, I'm not going to cry. Let me just unload everything. New episodes every Wednesday leave those filters at the door because it's time to get real. Hello, everybody and welcome back to RealPod. I'm so excited because today Max and I are heading on a road trip. You may have. I don't know if you will have seen this on Instagram because I think people can. You can listen to the pod before I probably post what I'm hoping and planning to post today, but basically announcing that Max and I are going on. It's a road trip, but it's also an RV trip because it's not just a road trip. We're going to be living in a Sprinter van. Devout RealPod listeners will have seen this coming. They will, because they will have listened to the burnout solo episode. I did at the end of Q4 before the new year, so it was December 2025. If you want to go back and listen to that, just to get the full scope of what really triggered this trip, I basically was so burnt out at the end of 2025. That's where a lot of these thoughts started to come into my brain of like, "When's the last time I've really been spontaneous? I haven't had a plan. I've done something that sounds wild and crazy." Just to do it, just to feel alive and so I'm going to talk a lot about today. Those feelings and how this trip was born and what kind of van we're staying in and where we're going and all that stuff, but all that to say, I'm sure some of you have seen this coming are going to be like, "Yes, she's doing it." Then others of you might be tuning in just because you saw on my Instagram and you're like, "I need to better understand what the heck is going on." So today is going to be a little bit of a life update and then also giving you all the deeds on our RV trip. Okay, so as far as a life update, I'll just do this quickly because by the time you're listening to this, it'll be two weeks from when I recorded it. So you'll probably have seen, I went to Natalie's bridal shower. The Super Bowl will have happened, "Oh my God, I have no idea who's going to win." It's so crazy to think, "When you hear this, we will know all these answers, right?" I think at a high level, I can just tell you that my 26th personally has started off pretty strong. I feel like there were a lot of things I learned from last year and changes I want to make. If you listen to the New Year's recap episode, you heard about some of those thoughts and my goals for the year. One of my goals for the year was to sell out booked and balanced, which we did, bang, bang. So super excited that that happened and we're working really hard on the next drop and little teaser, but we might be bringing in a new color way. So get excited for that. But yeah, I feel like my year personally with work and my relationships has been really good. And I think that's because there were certain things I decided I was going to make 2026 be about and I am following that. Don't get me wrong. Not everything was perfect. And if you're listening to this and you haven't had the best January or you sucked on your goals or you didn't even work on them at all, that's totally fine. I think we always can regroup, re-center and make tomorrow the day we want it to be. But one of my hopes for myself this year was to let loose, be more adventurous, have less of a plan, feel more spontaneous, feel more alive. And I think that's really why this trip feels super right. So I guess the first question you might be thinking is why are you doing this? Well, good question. The reason is because I feel like since college, basically, I have been on such a routine and I've had such a schedule and a plan, obviously at my days as the college athlete were incredibly planned out and incredibly regimented. And then when I graduated and became an entrepreneur, I just was always grinding and hustling and networking and building my business and building my brand and creating content and editing videos and looking for the next thing and all that has been great and I enjoyed it. I've had a lot of fun, freedom and excitement throughout my career since graduating college in 2019. These past, oh my gosh, seven years, crazy. I guess six. But yeah, however, I feel like I kind of just kept that momentum going and never really stopped to kind of pick up my head and be like, oh, look at what we have built. Look at what we have done. You can hit the brakes. You can slow down, sorry, am I screaming? I just realized I feel like I'm screaming. I'm going to talk a little bit more gently. I feel like it's relatable for those of you that are really excited and start screaming when you're talking about something you're passionate about. I know you're nodding along, like, or I do that all the time. Max will be like, babe, you're screaming. I'm like, oh my god. Okay. Anyways, in addition to that, not only have I not picked up my head to slow down, but I also don't think I've picked up my head to really reassess, like, who I am and how I feel and what I want my life to be about now and honestly, just like the who I am part of it, you all have seen me evolve in many different eras and chapters of my life when I was really shifting out of my identity as a college athlete and then shifting again from being a mental health public speaker to not wanting to travel as much, not wanting to dive back into the trauma of the past as much and growing into different lanes and aspects of my career and leaning more into marriage and leaning more into lifestyle and leaning more into body image and then feeling like I talked a lot about eating to sort of recovery and shared a lot about that. And then similarly felt like I wanted to shift again and it's hard for me to allow myself to evolve to what is next because I definitely cling to identity a lot like my ego loves to have a really clear outline of like who I am, what I do and how that equals success or how that gets me from A to Z. And I feel like right now I'm just in this place where I'm wanting to get more clarity on who I am and how I feel about my life and what I want my life to be in what I want my life to look like. You know, I had a mentor say to me, what do you want your life to look like? Write that on a piece of paper to yourself. What do I want my life to look like and answer the question. And if I'm being honest, which I always am with you, I haven't done that yet because I just feel like I don't know and it feels all consuming to write that on a paper and then like figure out the answer when I don't know it yet. And I don't love to not have the answer. That's definitely a part of my personality. And I think a lot of former athletes are competitive people can agree with that. Like you like to know, this is how I get better at this. This is how I get this thing. This is how I do this thing. And then you fall the steps. I've always said my whole life, if you give me the map, I've no doubt I will get there. But it's like I want the map. And life doesn't have a map, right? So I think the reason I want to go on this trip is because I can't remember the last time that I have done something that felt really spontaneous, adventurous, a little reckless. And that was totally just for me. It wasn't for something else for some greater part of a plan or to grow the business or to lead to then this opportunity. It was like I'm just going to do this because I want to do this. And what really inspired it was not only just feeling the burnout. And I think really stuck in my own life at the end of 2025. But I also read Matthew McConaughey's memoir green lights. And he was just so like free and wild. And he went on different trips. And he lived abroad. And he made it in Hollywood. And then he went on a road trip. Even though he was like an award-nominated actor, he didn't stay in the machine of LA. He'd left. And then he came back. And I was just so inspired by that. And the way that he was like, he called it his canoe, his RV that he lived in. And he was like me and the canoe. And I drive here and I'd go there. And I'd stop at this place. And I met someone at this diner. And I was like, I want to have experiences like that. And so that really got me thinking what if we did a road trip. At first, I did not plan on actually having a sprinter van, but living in one, I thought Max and I would be doing different Airbnb's. And when I first asked Max about this trip, I was like, would you be down to just like take a month or three weeks and just live in different places with me. And we can just figure it out as we go and adventure. And I remember the night I asked him this. And I didn't say it with like this positive, bubbly, enthusiastic, like, oh my gosh, this is so fun. I honestly feel like I asked him with like a desperation with a tone of like I just want to run away. And this is why I love Max and feel like I have a great life partner is I think he could see that in me. And although he wasn't 100% juiced up and he didn't know all the answers, he looked at me and was like, yes. And I remember when he said that yes to me, I just felt so like loved and seen by him in that moment because there was so much I didn't have to explain for him to see that like this was something I needed and I needed to do it with him. And it was one of those funny moments where like to just stereotype a husband is just seeing his wife absolutely lose it and be like, the best way to diffuse this is actually just to like go along with her. So he totally jumped in my canoe. 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So they use the highest quality materials like 100% European linen and organic cotton, but they work directly with safe ethical factories and cut out the middle man so that we are not paying for the brand markup, just the high quality clothing. So refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com/realpod for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. It's now available in Canada too. So that's quince q-u-i-n-c-e.com/realpod to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com/realpod. That was that. And then it was just like, okay, planning it, what are we going to do it and what is this going to look like? And so from there, we originally were going to go all of February. And then we were like, okay, does that maybe feel really ambitious and it's four weeks just like so much time. We don't really need to do four weeks. And then Natalie has had a bridal shower, pop up on my calendar. And then there was the Super Bowl. And there were just a few little things that were not making it ideal to go all of February because I didn't want to start a road trip and then go to Natalie's shower, reintegrate with society, and then go back on the trip. Like I really want to feel like I'm getting in the car and not going to see anyone I know for that stretch of time. I'm just my brain's really weird like that. I can't mix things. I am very binary. And so we ended up shifting it to be after her shower the week after we would go. And so it's going to be just about three weeks. We'll be on the road. And I'm really excited about it. I feel like it's the perfect amount of time. And even Max was saying, going middle slash end of February to first week of March is actually more ideal like for us mentally, because then you feel like you kind of attacked the first two weeks of the month. And then you're kind of like playing hooky. And then you're not really a part of the start of the next month. It feels like a nice like lol of time for us mentally. So whatever Max needs to say to be like, this makes sense. I'm like, yep, yes, it does babe. I will say he has gotten very excited now that the trip has really taken shape. And I think the two of us know that in the future next year, we want to be family planning, all that stuff. These are the experiences that we can really have together before having kids and having that responsibility. And so that's super appealing to him. He's also never been on a road trip sleeping in a sprinter van. So he's excited about it. And yeah, it's just gonna be great. He has started making this joke where he's like, wait, are you just kidnapping me? And I'm like, yes, he's like, all you want to do is take me, put me in a car, drive away, and not have to see anyone else. And just like, give me all to yourself. And I was like, and what is so wrong with that? Like, what is the problem with that? So anyways, he's definitely excited now. He's gotten on board wholeheartedly. And I'm really pumped. Oh, another reason that we shifted the timeline was because the van that we wanted to rent was not available during the original dates we were looking at. And let me just tell you, it's crazy how there's so many different sides of the internet. Applications, websites, possibilities, things that people do that we have no idea about unless we decide to do it in our own life. So I was on this website outdoorsy.com. You can rent all these vans. There are people, you know, giving reviews. We use this van on a road trip here. We did this here. People have full-fledged businesses of the sprinter vans that they renovate and they put beds in. And they add in a kitchen. It's like crazy. I had no idea about all this stuff. I've been looking at a few creator accounts of people who live in vans. Jenna, you guys know Jenna who works with me. She used to help wrap a few people who were road trip RV liver creators. And so she sent me some of their accounts to look through. It's a whole new world. And so when I was first looking at some of these sprinter vans, I had to learn a lot because it's, you just got to really think about like what can you tolerate, right? Like do we want to have a sprinter van that allows us to shower like within the van or outside of the van? Or do we want to be stopping at like planet witnesses to shower? I do not want to be stopping at random places to shower. I was like, that's got to be something that I do want to have part of our van. Also, we are going to be working on the trip. Well, Max is definitely going to be working in on his computer. And so we wanted to have a little area of the van where like you could sit easily with a computer, but not too big because I imagine we'll be going to coffee shops. We'll be stopping in little towns and exploring things. So we don't need to just like be confined to the van, but we definitely wanted that ability. As far as work for me on the trip, I am going to have no work except creating if I feel like creating. And I definitely think that this trip excites me and I'm going to be wanting to create content around the trip. And as I experience it, but other than that, I'm alleviating all pressure on myself to have anything I need to do. I do have one board meeting for the hidden opponent, but I didn't want to move that because there's like 10 people who are there and that would have just been rude of me to be like, we have to move the whole thing, there's this trip. So I do have that board meeting that I will be leading, that's gonna take place, but other than that, I don't have anything else to do. And at first, I was like, oh, well, maybe I can use this time to start trying to like get thoughts down for a book if I want to write a book one day and I can just brainstorm ideas. Or maybe I can use this time and then I was like, Victoria, no, you're doing the thing. You're doing the thing where you are now giving yourself requirements of things to do and we can work on on the trip that's supposed to be like having nothing to do to just live and experience life and take each day as it comes. So I'm really proud of myself that I caught that and was like, no, I wanna relieve all expectations and the only thing that I can do if I want to do is create content. I wanted to set it up so that if I came back from the trip and had posted nothing or created nothing or written nothing, that that would be fine. So that's how we're thinking about the work of the trip. RealPod is brought to you by Element. You know that the Browns love elements so much. It's such a great way to make sure you are staying hydrated and getting all the electrolytes that you need because electrolyte deficiency or imbalance can cause headaches, cramps, fatigue, brain fog and weakness and I feel the difference when I get it right versus when I don't. 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With features that help you plan, stay motivated and achieve peak performance, you can let yourself run, lift, scope, push and go while Peloton handles all the rest. What I think is so cool about it is it's real-time strength coaching. So Peloton IQ has features like goal setting, so you can always make new progress. And the movement tracking camera allows Peloton IQ to count your reps and correct your form in real-time. I think this is amazing because when I'm working out, I don't like to count my reps. I don't know why it's like my body's doing so many hard things. That counting my reps is like the last thing I want to do, so thank you Peloton IQ for taking care of that. And you can even go on a 45 minute run on the tread plus or five minute of stretch. And Peloton IQ creates a personal workout roadmap with weekly recommended classes led by instructors who match your mood, vibe and personality. So let yourself run, lift, scope, push and go, explore the new Peloton cross-training tread plus at onepeloton.com. That's onepeloton.com. Back to the actual van though. Max also didn't want to get something super big because he doesn't feel comfortable driving it, which I totally understand. I also didn't want to get something super big because I feel like it defeats the purpose of the trip. Like I don't want to feel like we're in a moving five-star hotel. You know what I mean? I do want to feel like we are living modestly. I don't want to bring tons of clothes. I just wanted to feel simple, natural. And just like not that deep. I just don't want it to be that deep. Like if we decide to go to a dinner somewhere and like I don't have the right outfit, who fucking cares? That's what I'm craving. It's just the casualness, the simpleness, and the letting go of all the expectations or the standards or the routine that I feel like I've had. Now I feel like this trip is also about a few different things. It is about escape. It is about expansion. It's about healing. It's about curiosity. Something I'm really hoping to prioritize on this trip is the journey in word. I will be bringing my booked and balanced planner. I will be bringing this other quotes journal that a friend gave me, or it's so journal, but it just has all these like thought starters about life that I want to bring with. And I'm just excited to really take some time. Hopefully every single day to meditate, be with myself, be present, be in nature, and see what comes up for me. I feel like I am searching for answers. I don't even know what the questions are. I'm just wanting to open up myself and be willing and ready to receive whatever lesson it is. I need to learn whatever thing it is. I need to uncover in myself. I'm imagining Max and I, at night with a beautiful view of the ocean or nature sitting in the little bed in the back of the van, talking, listening to music, and just having those moments. It would be fun if we could create a bonfire one night, like a little campfire situation, put ourselves to the survivor test if we can start a fire, but also with the proper tools, not trying to burn down a forest by accident. That would be a nightmare, but I do hope to come back with a lot of clarity on myself and life. So I'm excited for that and definitely want to prioritize it. And once again, not make it a thing or a goal of like, I need to have the answers to this. I need to decide I'm okay with this, because that's impossible, but more so, just the open to explore and experience. As far as we're going, we are going to stay in California because it is only three weeks and there are so many beautiful places in California that we have never been, like Yosemite, Big Sur. I want to go to Carmel, Point Lobos. I feel like I've lived in California my whole life, but I have not even really seen the state. And so whether we're going to go up the coast or we're going to take highways, I don't know. That's another thing is I don't want to have a plan. I genuinely can't tell you where we're going first, because to me, that already gives me the anxiety that feeling like a routine. Like I don't want it to be like we have to go here the next day. If we decide to drive somewhere, take a left turn and we love where we are and we stay there for a week, like I want us to have the freedom to do that. And any semblance of a plan makes me feel like it's not the essence of what I want this trip to be. So we have ideas of Yosemite, Big Sur, Carmel, never been to Napa, never been to Lake Tahoe, Point Reyes, and Marin County is supposed to be gorgeous. Oh, and if we go to Yosemite, we could see El Capitan, that mountain that Alex Honnold free soloed. So we just have some ideas. And I genuinely want to get in the car and then look at the map and be like where first? Or Max just start driving north and then we talk about it in the car. That to me feels the most fun and spontaneous. I also feel like hopefully me doing something like this can inspire one of you to think about the ways you could incorporate more spontaneity or adventure into your life. I think that it's something that we all need, especially as adults. We lose the child like wonder. We lose the curiosity. We figure out what everything is and life just becomes monotonous and we convince ourselves like, oh, I can't do that because I need to do this or I can't go here because what about X? And it's like at some point, there's always going to be something holding us back and excuse that we can make. And we just have to decide when we are going to just do the thing we want because we only have this one life. And I definitely know the privilege Max and I have to be able to just do this. And in my research of van life, there are so many people on the internet who are doing this within their words, zero money and their savings. I'm just saying there are ways we all can make adventure and spontaneity possible in our lives. And I'm really excited that we are going to do this. It's been cool too. A lot of our friends are all super supportive. a lot of people like, I've always wanted to do that or we want to do that or we We did that, so that's been exciting, too, is a lot of that support. Laney was definitely like, "Wait, you're going to live in a van?" And I was like, "Yes, mom, I am. But it's a cute van." So anyways, that is the update on the road trip that Max and I are heading on and on now. I'm super excited for the experience, what I'm going to learn on the trip, the memories we're going to create together. I want to thank you guys in advance for your support. One of my fears of doing something like this was, "Is it so random that my audience is like, what are you doing? This is then what we signed up for to follow, but I got so many heartwarming and kind and supportive messages from you guys telling me you would be so here for the van content that you would be like, "Yes, girl, go do this." So I just want to thank you because all of those really sweet messages after the Berna episode really meant so much to me, I've screen-chotted a lot of them. If I wasn't able to respond to you personally, just know that I most likely saw it and it really meant a lot. So sometimes I'll be like literally out at a dinner and I'll see a notification of like a DM and I'll read it and it's like, "Oh my God, that makes me so happy." But then I can't respond right there because I shouldn't even be on my phone in that situation. But yeah, I just want to thank you guys so much and I am excited for what I get to share with you from this trip and your support means so much to me. So thanks for always being down to clown and ready to ride for all the different ups and downs and new journeys I take you on. I feel like that's a fun friendship or sisterhood that we have, whether I'm like the big sister doing the thing and then letting you know how it went or showing you it's not that scary and you can do it too or the best friend, hopefully, that makes you feel like you're understood and you're not losing it and it's okay to not know or to struggle or to wonder. I'm just super grateful for you all and for this community. So thank you and I'll let you know how it goes. I'm probably posting an update as we speak. Let this be hopefully the next seed of inspiration so that whatever it is, your heart is yearning to do. It feels like it's boys got a little louder today. Thanks so much. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of RealPod. If this hit home or helped you in some way, send it to a friend, a teammate, Rumi, share the love, share the realness, new episodes of RealPod come out every single Wednesday. So make sure you are subscribed to this podcast so you never miss an episode. To leave a rating or a review of the show, head to iTunes and let me know what you think. I love hearing from you. Not to mention you can stay connected with RealPod throughout the week seeing behind the scenes info and sneak previews of upcoming guests by following the @RealPod account on Instagram. All information about today's show and guests will be linked in the description of this episode. Thanks again for listening. I love you guys so, so much. Let's go dominate the day and as always, keep it real. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode. [BLANK_AUDIO]