After Petaluma and the weekend it was back to Vallejo of a cloudy Monday to have some blood
sucked out and then nice cool sunny April days until we went high
into the hills of Berkeley for a long delayed visit/lavish dinner with Michael Katz, longtime
friend and sometime Medical Professional. Another couple of those days followed,
until we decided, perhaps ill-advisably, on takeout from Gaby’s just as, unexpectedly and
unbelievably, the Impossible Tundra I’d been watching for for going on three years turned up on the internet. After a mostly sleepless night I was thus atypically and precipitously off to the
Roseville Auto Mall for an appointment with Anisha, unexpectably Nepali, to look at a truck
so new to the lot it hadn’t been properly prepped yet. It looked good on the outside and under the hood but interiorwise it looked like pigs had been partying and smoking copiously…
Nonetheless, way closer than anything I’d seen in all those years lurking online and with a promising Carfax history* and zero rust so what if it smelled a little weird…
Four hours later thanks to Sullivan’s overly exuberant detailing crew** it smelled even weirder
but I was driving it home, buzzed on my own day-old caffé freddo, nostalgic for but not really missing that cracked-by-buzzards right hand mirror although giving up those new Yokohamas
had been rather painful. Probably the last earthly vehicle I’ll buy in this lifetime and the one
before it, well, after more than eighteen years and 210,000 miles of some pretty extreme shit
it never left me stranded. If it hadn’t been rusting out around the windshield I’d be driving and repairing it still. So, into the unknown…
*I was particularly impressed with the service history, but time will tell.
** There wasn’t so much pressure to buy as the assumption that having shown up that was my intention, true, and although it’d been almost a quarter century since I’d bought a “used car” there it was.
Time will tell…
Your “detailing man” knows what he’s doing.
Well he did drench it in some sort of aromatic sticky “new car” stuff which took most of the weekend to disperse…
Perhaps Dr Katz can offer some medical upgrades so you’ll outlast that new Tundra. 18 years is just around the corner and, while he’s at it, ask for brain software updates to get you to triple digits. You should easily get to 350,000 miles on your new ride, once the desert air cleanses interior tobacco/pig stench.
Anyway, congratulations on the purchase! It looks entirely too shiny to be yours, chrome wheels and all!
Of course, you may WANT to buy another vehicle sooner, when the TundraAir HPH (hydrogen powered hover model) comes out in 5 or 10 years.
Oh, that’s what you meant by your “last earthly vehicle”! Roads? You don’t need no stinking roads; go fully “off road”.
Ah, but those gnarly, dusty, bumpy desert crossings just wouldn’t feel right in a hovercraft, would they?
Popular opinions for mental upgrades point to ayahuasca but after DMT decades ago I’m not too sure…as for the new ride, pig stench is diminishing but I’ll await next week’s journeys to feel really confident in those Carfax reports.
Wheels are steel, not chrome and yeah, overall, shinier than anything I’ve campaigned in more than a decade. Maybe I can get used to it, eh?
did this vehicle inspire Yellowstone?
Which vehicle and…what’s “Yellowstone”?
Congrats on the new ride!
Pleased you have new wheels! Long time coming, dead-eye persistence pays off.
Glad it has a good service history!
Well next week will tell; going over the hill and on to Winnemucca…