Sarah Berkowitz walked into the Boho Vans workshop in Tempe on a day when the thermometer outside was reading 112 degrees, swapped her shoes for a pair of safety-appropriate ones, and stepped into the early skeleton of the van she had been saving toward for ten years. For anyone who has spent two years living out of a car and found themselves unwilling to go back to conventional life, the sight of labeled wire looms and PEX plumbing tucked into a half-insulated Ford Transit T350 would feel exactly like this: evidence that a long-held idea is finally becoming physical. Sarah had spent those years on the road with her dog Kzian, then met Kayla, and now the two of them were standing inside a 148-inch wheelbase all-wheel-drive van that was two weeks into its build and, in Sarah’s words, already felt impossible to imagine driving.
What two weeks of build work actually looks like inside a van
Brett and Ken walked Sarah and Kayla through the workshop in real time, narrating each system as they moved through the space. The wiring loom was already threaded from front to rear, carrying circuits for lights, a heater, a 24-volt Starlink setup, and a shore power cable for connecting at campsites or a friend’s house. Hemp insulation had been packed into every available cavity, and the PEX plumbing lines for the water system were routed along the passenger side. The electrical cabinet was in what the builder called its ‘infant stages’: a solar controller, a DC-to-DC charger, and a battery balancer for the 24-volt system were laid out but not yet housed, with the battery bank slated to mount above them. The cooling setup drew the most attention. A condenser compressor would go under the van, while the evaporator was positioned up front and would eventually sit behind a custom trim piece, running off the same 24-volt system. ‘Why inhibit the travel?’ Brett said, explaining the choice to build a system that could handle both heating and cooling regardless of destination. All of Sarah’s materials were labeled and waiting in her own dedicated cubby in the shop.
A rental van, a 114-degree afternoon, and the fastest elevation fix in Arizona
With the build still weeks from completion, Sarah and Kayla rented one of Boho’s vans for four days to stay in the area. Kayla admitted she had never driven a ProMaster before, noting it ‘drives like butter’ despite being the tallest vehicle she had ever been behind the wheel of. The pair picked up Kzian, stopped at a local drink spot called Swig where Sarah ordered a fresco with lemon, pineapple, strawberry, mango, and frozen dragon fruit, and then drove up into the elevation of a pine forest where the temperature dropped from 112 to 80 degrees under heavy tree cover. That evening Sarah stood in the van doorway making nachos with a large glob of avocado and called it perfect. The next morning she discovered she had forgotten her coffee pods, faced three days without them, and moved on to yogurt bowls. The gas fill-up stung at $70, though both agreed the trade-off of being able to leave the dogs safely inside while grabbing lunch made it worth it. Brett had recommended a local restaurant called El Rancho, where the portion sizes were large enough that chips and salsa alone nearly ended the meal before the entrees arrived.
The shop door, still open
A labeled stack of materials in Sarah’s dedicated cubby inside the Boho Vans workshop, waiting for the build team to reach the next phase.
Sarah walked back into that same workshop at the end of the four days to return the rental, her own Transit still mid-build on the other side of the shop floor, its electrical cabinet open and its batteries not yet mounted, ten years of savings woven somewhere into the wire looms running toward the back of the van.
