#dirtbagswag whips 006: Caleb's B2500 & The Making of a Dirtless Dirtbag

#dirtbagswag

Caleb James is the anti-dirtbag.

He is always clean.

He hates being dirty.

He openly hates dirt.

He hates sleeping in it.

He hates being covered in it.

He perpetually makes fun of me for my dirty fingernails, greasy hair, tattered and unwashed clothes. I don't know how he does it, but after a week in the mountains, Caleb looks like he just got out of the shower.

In fact, if you saw Caleb in the wild, your first thought would most likely be, Man who let this insanely good looking John Stamos-Rob Lowe hybrid with cheek bones like granite and back muscles like a sack of potatoes out of the super-top-secret underground-Calvin-Klein-underwear-model-laboratory? 

But don't let his dashing good looks and disdain for dirt fool you. Caleb loves mountains. And he loves the freedom and feeling he gets when moving vertically in their midst; whether in the Southeast or the Mountain West, either steep jug hunting or thin ice climbing, whether on foot or the sharp end of the rope. So he's always just dealt with the dirt.

Caleb does it all and he looks good doing it.

That is, he dealt with it until he found his 1996 Dodge B2500 conversion van at a dirtbag deal in Salida, Colorado where he works in the summers. He drove it back to Chattanooga, Tennessee where he studies outdoor education and business; sets boulder problems in the campus climbing gym; fixes bicycles; and takes Greek-lifers top-roping at Rocktown, SUPing on the Tennessee River, and leading ski trips to North Carolina.

Caleb has swagged out his van into a full-on dirtbag adventure mobile complete with bed, gear storage, and an enormous roof rack. But he hasn't sacrificed his penchant for the aesthetically pleasing either. "Tito" is decked out with interior mood lighting, shag carpet, and a Nintendo 64.

At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, students often mistake his van for an ambulance. And while that mistake would have made sense in the early 90s, Caleb's Dodge conversion van is, in fact, a lifesaver of sorts because now he doesn't have to sleep in all that dang dirt anymore.

whip specs

make and model: 1996 Dodge B2500
moniker: "Tito"
under the hood: 5.2L V8
gas mileage: see above
dirtbag mods: safari sized roof rack; DIY paint job; shag carpet yanked from his parents' old house; 12" Kicker subwoofer; Nintendo 64; eagle hood mount (sits on the spare tire cover). The bed comes with the van.

Caleb graduates in May and plans on dirtless dirtbagging across the United States before returning as a guide for the summer in Colorado. I'm hoping to meet up with him in the mountains at some point. You can catch him and Tito at a crag near you, but remember to kick the dirt off your shoes before you do.