Semi-Rad: Welcome to My Adventure Vehicle

Welcome to my adventure vehicle. Please make yourself comfortable. Oh yes, please, you can absolutely eat in here. I would just maybe suggest that you not eat anything that has dropped onto the floor.

a drawing of if an adventure vehicle is for you

Notice that new car smell? Of course not. This baby had a few thousand miles on it when I got it, to be honest. It didn’t have that new car smell. It had that broken-in feel, like the driver’s seat had been broken in by someone else’s butt. It does not have windshield wipers that automatically turn on when the magic windshield senses moisture, or sensors that beep when your tires start to cross the dotted line, but let me tell you, it has … well, feel free to put your feet on the dashboard.

It is, in the way you might hear a salesperson say at a dealership, the Ultimate Driving Machine. That is, when saying “the Ultimate Driving Machine,” you actually mean driving down 50 miles of washboard roads while not worrying about any permanent damage you may be causing to the vehicle’s undercarriage because where you’re going is more important than keeping shiny things shiny.

Smell that? The vague dirt/B.O./campfire odor, something that’s never been recreated by the folks who make those pine-tree-shaped air fresheners? That smell is all mine. Well, all mine, with some help from a rotating cast of about a dozen friends who have ridden in here on the way to a trailhead. And a few dogs.

It sleeps two comfortably. I mean, maybe not as comfortably as a memory foam mattress at the Marriott, but comfortably close to the stars and comfortably far away from freeways and email and cable news and cellphone reception.

Although the adventure vehicle will not impress anyone who enjoys exquisitely crafted automobiles or just television commercials featuring exquisitely crafted automobiles, it will impress … actually, probably nobody will be exactly impressed by it. But they will be happy with where it takes them. And that’s what this vehicle is all about: getting us to wonderful places. So let’s go.

Oh, I should also tell you that that window doesn’t roll down.

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