State by State

We’ve learned a new verb: jeeping. Well, in our case it’s probably nissaning and we are obviously not doing it right. As far as I can tell it involves taking your unsuspecting car on a deadly, narrow, mountain road in search of breathtaking views and an adrenaline rush. Our truck is more than happy to oblige, but the driver and the pilot (otherwise known as I and Natalia) not so much. One problem is you never know what awaits around the corner. We wonder if the road marked in a guide as moderate jeeping is easy enough for us? (It isn’t). Once you commit to a road there is usually no turning back. And I don’t mean it in a metaphorical sense. The road is literally too narrow to turn. I suppose one could just back off all the way down.

Reality is a tempting thing to ignore. All those inches, centimeters, cubic feet. Who wants to keep track of them. Who needs a painful bargaining with physical world. This is more or less what I was thinking when observing a pile of our of luggage assembled haphazardly in front of the suddenly and painfully shrinking truck. It was clear, well, to me it was clear, that we cannot take everything. No superpowers that I and my better half posses can squeeze everything into the car. But I know better than to argue. I don’t really do hardware in this arrangement conventionally known as marriage. Come to think of it I do not really do hardware in any arrangement. So I patiently handed over bags. Rearranged packages. Carried our bikes in and out.And finally it worked out much better than I suspected. We could take nearly everything that we wanted. With the exception of skis and some winter gear. But winter is far away and we figured out couple of ways we can retrieve our stuff. In the meantime I can get back to ignoring reality. Everyone should try it from time to time.

We were just getting used to how our truck makes us feel: all manly and rugged, passing for real Vermonters lacking nothing but a dog (and a cow, and a farm, and a cute name for our own brand of goat cheese). However, the thought of carrying anything of value on the truck bed was more than we could bear. The vision of flying suitcases, of our bikes magically unchaining and suicidally throwing themselves into the following traffic, made us act. We decided to cap our irrational fears once and for all.

I never wanted a truck. Let me say it differently: the truck is the last thing I ever wanted. Especially in the current (bad pun intended) climate. I can just picture all my liberal I’d bike to work if I could friends making snide comments. And all my conservative friends secretly hoping that the truck is the sign of the things to come. Well, it isn’t. It’s just that Natalia and I took some time off to travel across this beautiful country. And when we started making lists of all the things we wanted to take with us; and when we pictured our bikes, our diving gear, our hiking gear, our camping gear and - last but absolutely not least - our computers crammed in the trunk and back seats of our poor sedan, we came to the conclusion that nothing else will do.