Everyone romanticises following the Tour de France. Camp at the summit, wake up, watch the race, live the dream. Anthony did exactly that a few years back, camping roadside at the bottom of a big climb the night before a stage. He was destroyed. Couldn't ride properly, couldn't podcast properly, spent the whole day just surviving instead of actually covering the race he'd travelled to cover. That experience is what's behind this van build.
Key Takeaways
The cycling tourism industry will happily sell you the dream of following grand tours. Hotels near finish lines, guided fan experiences, all of it. What none of that solves is the gap between watching the race and actually being able to function the next day when you want to ride the same roads or record a decent podcast. Anthony's answer is a Honda Step Wagon converted into something that works as a bike workshop, a sleep space, and a mobile recording studio. Pop-up roof for open country, rock-and-roll bed inside for city parking without drawing attention, outdoor shower, power washer, compressor, fridge, cooker, and satellite wifi for uploads from wherever the stage lands.
The stealth camping angle is the bit most people miss. Pull up in a city the night before a stage with a pop-up roof deployed and you're a tourist. Keep the roof down, block the windows, and you're just a van. That's the difference between sleeping comfortably and getting moved on at 2am. The whole build is engineered around one lesson from that first trip: if you're wrecked, the rest of it falls apart. The riding suffers, the podcast suffers, the whole reason you went suffers. Fix the sleep and the recovery setup first, everything else follows.
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If the Tour coverage angle interests you, the episode on what it actually means to be a roadman is worth your time. And for anyone thinking about bikepacking or event travel more broadly, the what do you need to bring bikepacking episode covers the logistics side in detail.