It’s Good to Have a Win
Delayed gratification is not my strong suit. Patience is a struggle for me, and oftentimes my sense of self-belief obscures the reality of my shortcomings. With a proclivity toward biting off more than I can chew, I tend to overcommit and subsequently pay the price in annoyance, inconvenience and outright disappointment. Sometimes, I can’t leave well enough alone.
Pants and I started what’s turned into a bit of an odyssey with our diesel-swapped Land Cruiser in July 0f 2015, and it took until mid-January of 2016 for me to take initial delivery. The impetus for this truck is to enable us to make quick, comfortable, well-equipped getaways to the mountains, on relatively short notice. With a tiny hotel room on top of one of the most capable 4x4s ever produced, the vision is for us to go far, high and remote with Bunny. Pants has been remarkably calm about the failures, the disappointments, and the strandings that have occurred thus far.
I have precious little understanding of automotive mechanics in concept, much less the specifics of either a Cummins 12v engine, an New Venture 4500 manual transmission, nor of systems aboard Toyota Land Cruisers. I can operate a vehicle capably and skillfully, but I’m a mewling newborn when it comes to diagnosing, fixing or improvising solutions to broken cars. All of which adds up to a pretty lopsided set of negative characteristics for a guy investing in a custom truck — with the intention of driving said truck on trans-continental expeditions. At least I can’t be faulted for doing things in half-measures, it’s been both feet straight in on this project.
Strike One
In mid-February of this year, we excitedly packed for the inaugural camp trip, pointed south by southwest toward the Malpais area of New Mexico, a wolf sanctuary tucked hard up against the edge of the Ramah Navajo and Zuni Indian Reservations and squarely in the middle of dark-ass nowhere. Weighted down with all our gear, we left home before sunrise and were working our way up and out of the Rio Grande Valley west of Albuquerque, Pants at the controls, when a sudden and definitive mechanical grinding sound — coupled with a full loss of drive — signaled we had a major problem. Diagnosis: missing adapter plate to retain the seal between my NV4500 and the OEM Toyota transfer case. Total loss of the freshly-rebuilt, 1100-mile transmission. Everybody: bummed. Camping trip: over.
We rebuild it. I strain to hear and identify the mysterious noises, vibrations and idiosyncrasies the truck produces. To this day, I do that, actually. Over the course of the next weeks, I drive it cautiously, frequently, treating every drive as a shake-down session, sending detailed and annoying reports, laced with questions, as texts to my builder. He gamely responds and helps me rebuild.
In and amongst the anguish of the fits-and-starts build process, repairs and Pants’ regular (and sensitively-delivered) status seeking, I manage to have a number of good local trips, successful days on the river. Things are looking up.
Moment Nos. 1–2
In late March, a free weekend pops up on the calendar and we start looking north to the drying high country, and plot a trip heavy on dirt roads and Forest Service tracks, taking in parts of the Carson National Forest. Our first day brightens early, and we anxiously hit the road, Bunny having delivered a couple continuous weeks of glitch-free operation. Past Abiquiu, we turn onto a backroad, and nearing Costilla we fork onto the first Forest Service roads Bunny has traveled in my ownership. Early season mud — some yet frozen in the low-angle late winter sun — makes our going interesting looking, but the traction from our locomotive of a truck is a constant. We chart a route using GaiaGPS, a very full-featured GPS app loaded on Pants’ iPad, and soon find ourselves on narrowing tracks, as the identifiable road splits into capillaries, high in the Ponderosa.
Then Bunny and I have our first Moment together: I beach 7,000lbs. worth of truck in axle-depth snow, the 75-profile Mud tires following unseen ruts off the track. Briefly, I panic at how wrong this could go — the two of us at least 10 miles off pavement, and closer to 20 from any semblance of a town. I engage the center locking differential to see whether I can extract myself, and to my surprise and delight, Bunny nearly idles herself unstuck. A Moment rendered moot by a single oodle of torque; a beautiful relief of a thing.
Minutes later, I choose poorly and again sink Bunny into the crotch of two forking trails, this seeming a more serious stuck. On goes the CDL and I quickly spin the tires. Shit. I cross my fingers, lock the front and rear differentials additionally and ease onto the throttle — the fat tires gaining purchase steadily, I ease my way up a slight rise, ass-backward and to dry land. What a machine! Swelling with confidence, I drive on.
Strike Two
We realize the futility of navigating our intended route through patchy snow and return to the Forest Service road. A pretty one, lined with Ponderosa as we ascend a canyon, enjoying the day together and going nowhere in particular. Shortly, we’re going nowhere in specific as the truck suddenly cut out at 35mph. Completely confused, I crank and crank the starter motor but the truck won’t fire. Tension seeps into the cabin as I run through the skinny stack of knowledge I’ve got about what to do in this situation. Utterly bereft of a clue. Truly, deeply clueless I stood, straining to remember the basic identity of the parts, hoses and wires I saw under the hood.
With surprising quickness and not a single tear of consternation, we come to the decision that it’s time to hike for a cell signal, to rise our friend Micah, the builder of the truck. I take slim, bitter consolation in our preparedness for the hiking portion of this trip as we walk, well-equipped and clothed, up the road we had so recently been cruising in comfort. An eight-mile out and back gains a brief conversation with Micah, a single kernel of technical knowledge that illuminates a potential fix, and a backup plan that sees us either call Micah victoriously when I’ve accomplished a trailside fix, or him drive up to rescue us in the morning.
Needless to say, we needed the rescue.
It’s at this point that a brief observation of my wife’s character is in order. She’s an inherently adventurous person, patient with me and amused with me more often than I’d be with her if the tables were turned. She works a high-stress job as a pediatric cardiologist and her limited free time, she seizes with both hands. Up to this point, she had listened with a graceful understanding and acceptance about the myriad of issues around the truck’s genesis. Even participated in the destruction of the transmission, so had personally felt the raw ass-slap of Murphy’s Law. But she was running out of patience.
But we’re good at punting together, making the best of it. And truth be told, we were hardly roughing it — we actually managed to achieve our objective of car camping, but the circumstances had just camped on the margin of a sloping forest service road, not in some epic spot deep in the woods. With cold beer from our (still operating) fridge and an impromptu campfire to entertain us, we passed a quite pleasant night on the side of the road, awakened only by the two cars that passed us and in the morning, a somewhat grumpy but all-business Micah, who diagnosed an electrical issue and re-wired the truck in 15 minutes flat.
Lessons learned? Get an electrical emergency kit, first and foremost. Be grateful and extra-sweet both to my wife and my builder for the next week. Purchase AAA Platinum immediately. Delicately convince wife that technically, she has successfully camped in Bunny and returned home in the same vehicle.
Strike Two-Point-Five
Warily, I ventured out the following weekend for a solo fishing trip up my favorite Colorado river, and to my great disbelief, the trip went off without a hitch. Up washboard roads and hundreds of highway miles, Bunny was on a roll, and likewise I rolled south to Santa Fe to catch a Sunday dinner before the last leg home, buzzing and content with a solo weekend spent matching wits with salmonids.
Stuffed full of green chile cheeseburger and kölsch, I sauntered to the street and enjoyed looking at the truck, all bumpers and roof rack, mud-splattered in that earned filthy sort of way. I hopped in and click-click-click went the starter motor, but no firing up. Shitfuck.
I tinker with things here and there, again unsure what the issue is given my heretofore problem-free weekend, but eventually accept my fate and called AAA for assistance. “Forty-five minutes, hon,” I hear through the phone and ten minutes later, out of sheer frustration, I decide to try the starter one more time — which for some unknown reason, this time works. I immediately call AAA to cancel and jam on home, frustrated but grateful to hit my driveway.
The machinations of the next few days tested my patience with the whole concept of this truck in new ways, but I resigned myself to parting ways with it for some unknown period and my builder retrieved it, then towed it to his new home and shop, five hours north in central Colorado. The initial prognosis was not good: possible internal engine damage, necessitating pulling the whole motor out, at some unknown but formidable cost. “I’ve reached bottom,” I thought for the sixth time since taking possession of this truck.
Mercifully, the problem had been electrical in nature; the battery had arced itself, the alternator had fried and the ground wire under the hood had melted itself, so a new alternator, replacement battery and cables were installed. I was back in business, again, this time only several hundred dollars lighter of wallet. I drove the 5 hours home at or below the speed limit, ever-vigilant for new sounds, flickering instrumentation, or any signs of a new rock bottom.
Triumph of a Certain Kind
After a few more solo day trips, we commit to a three-night trip up the Conejos basin in southern Colorado, and this time eye some further-flung Forest Service roads, higher in elevation and critically, far further out than other campers. Our trip coincides with two circumstances that seem altogether fitting: Bunny’s air conditioning is on the fritz, and New Mexico endures its first heat wave of summer. I offer Pants the option of using our old pickup with functional cooling, or to proceed with the Bunny plan, knowing full well how hot New Mexico can be — and me a little unsteady about how hot the floorboard gets, always fearful of fusing more bits of machine together because of some valve, seal or adapter I was ignorant of.
Being the trooper she is, Pants chooses the Cruiser, and just after 5pm and in 95-degree ambient temperatures, we pull north. Windows down and sweating tits, we cruise and even as we ascend off the Interstate, it’s ass-meltingly hot inside the truck. The floorboard gets so hot Pants puts her feet out the window, and my mind races to catalogue all the things I suspect are melting. We make the border and turn upriver, where the air temperature cools and we climb into the valley, up over 8,000 feet and into shadow, truck throbbing along in blessed competence, drama-free except for the fading memory of sweaty thighs and flush cheeks.
High near the Continental Divide we fork from one Forest Service road to the next, and somewhere over 11,000 feet we come to a partially washed-out culvert undermining the road, to which Jenn worriedly asked me, “You don’t think we can make that, do you?”
My heart rate quickened as I chose my line, Jenn spotting for me, and with absolutely no issue, Bunny crawled right over the obstacle without so much as breathing heavily. We eventually encountered a late-season snow drift burying the road, so we backtracked and settled on Bunny’s first proper adventure camping spot, looking north across the high peaks of the Rockies, into a glorious glow of sunset. The temperature plummeted and as we sat by our fire, we heard a group of canids howling, providing us really fun conjecture as we dreamt of wolves returning to their native habitat. We slept our first truly relaxed night together in the tent, shades fully zipped down to bathe us in starlight. Such a fantastic night’s sleep.
We woke up to naked high mountain sunrise yoga and strong coffee, me typically single-minded in my desire to get my feet wet and let all the tribulation wash away with the foam lines and riffles on my favorite stretch of stream. For the full day, we fished determinedly, not having the greatest success but also very, very grateful for the solitude and for the comfort of the journey. We again climbed out of the valley, crossed paths with a porcupine and made another night’s camp.
The next morning we split up for what would become a memorable day: Jenn dropped me off in the river and drove up to the reservoir to paddleboard for the day. I watched with admiration, pride and a bit of redneck lust in my heart as my gorgeous mountain girl of a wife drove my gigantic, loud truck off and up the road. With many fish to hand, it was an exciting day for me, but most importantly, my wife returned to me absolutely beaming, bursting with enthusiasm for how her day had played out.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of owning Bunny for me is the attention it draws. I love that it’s a contradiction of a truck in a lot of ways, and that it’s so built up to do what it does. The diesel motor is highly incongruous with the truck itself, so most often people who notice the truck do so because they’re confused, as if their eyes and ears aren’t getting the same information. Your rural Americans are the group who appreciate it most though — many times already, and I’m sure many more times in the future, the question is asked of me, “Is that a diesel?” I enjoy the conversations that result from this, from random people at fuel stations, in parking lots and at trailheads. It’s satisfying to me as a lifelong car guy to be driving something that I had such an acute vision for, and it’s incredibly satisfying to go whistling past some guy in a heavy duty Dodge, or a built-up Jeep, because they just have no idea what they’re looking at. Egotistical, perhaps. But if I drove a lowrider or a rare air-cooled Porsche I’d probably feel the same thing. “It’s for the streets,” they say about the lowrider culture, and some aspect of that translates to my situation. It’s for the dirt roads, maybe.
Pants had her own Moment in Bunny when she nosed down to the edge of the reservoir in an effort to unload her board, but found herself having to do a 5-point turn to get back up the hill. Foot to the floor and billowing hydrocarbons, she extracted herself with dignity from being a little over her head and went on to paddle contentedly her whole day.
Crucially though — Jenn had a moment of pure redneck incongruity when she pulled Bunny to a seasonal fuel station / mercantile high in that valley. To hear her tell it, she hadn’t even switched the truck off when someone burst out the door of the shop asking her whether the truck was a Cummins. It gives me great pride to envision my petite, athletic and quite hot wife hopping out of Bunny, bikini top and ballcap and diesel exhaust. A redneck fever dream if ever there was one, and she’s mine. Just why I’m so acutely proud of that, I’m not sure, but the shop owner harangued her into opening the hood so he could gawk, and while she went inside to pay up, the owner had dragged a couple more appreciatively whistling rural Americans to the bumper. And now, she says, she understands first-hand what the full experience of the diesel Land Cruiser is.
After fishing we made camp, having planned to meet some friends in a certain spot, and sure enough, they showed. We met a guy riding his bike from the Mexican border to the Canadian border, all on dirt roads, shared beer and guacamole with him, and generally luxuriated in our overall magnificence.
The next day we settled on an ambitious day hike and set out with our friends and their wonderful dog to spend the day amongst the aspens and pines, the sound of a runoff-rich stream tearing downhill. We made a decidedly spectacular meadow for a turnaround point, each of us swimming in the freezing water and me spooking several large cutthroat with my footsteps. The entire day, our non-functioning air conditioning hung over our heads, and we appropriately basked in the cool mountain air, knowing nearly four hours of desert heat awaited us on our drive home. When it was time, we pointed south, made Santa Fe for the traditional brewery dinner and on leaving the restaurant, Bunny fired right up. We drove home, me almost giddy that after a year’s worth of anguish, expense, disappointment and regret, that the truck and I had finally delivered on the promise to my wife.
It’s good to get a win.
