ABOUT THIS PHOTO:
Breakfast awaits where an hour earlier my feet rested in a warm sleeping bag. Before making my bed there, the space was occupied bu tote boxes and related stuff. One of those boxes---a large gray one---is on the hood, having spent the night there. Non-skid fabric keeps the air mattress from sliding around. Atop the air mattress is a cotton rug that keeps me from sweating when pressed against the non-permeable air mattress.

ABOUT SYSTEM 2:
My second system came into being in mid-2005 when I built a carpeted plywood floor in the Subaru. It occupied all of the car’s interior except for the driver’s seat, the center console, and the floor area of the front passenger seat. This required me to remove the front passenger seat and the bench-style back seat, pretty easy to do because of the simple way they were attached to the floor and their light weight.

The new floor eliminated the discomforts, and eased the space problems, of the first system. Now I was able to lie parallel to the car's long axis, lessening the need to move things around for sleeping. This issue became even less bothersome when I discovered I could store things during the night on the hood of my car (a tarp kept them dry).