You are what you drive up here. Not in the city sense of people judging you for the make or newness of your car, but more that your car is kind of like your avatar. People pass your car on the road or see it parked in front of someone’s place, they know your movements, where you’re going, who you’re seeing. You can walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, in a social dynamics sense, by driving a few miles in their car and observing who waves on the road and who doesn’t.
But otherwise the car here is all about functionality. It’s ability to go from A to B with what you need. Sometimes what’s between A and B is pitted logging roads, water bars and rivers, or a whole lot of sand, salt, and pea gravel. And what you need is a load of wood and a quiver of surfboards. Which is why the car here is more often than not a truck. My Subaru wagon may have been as sexy as a soccer mom but I loved her. She’d always been really good to me. Faithful. Always started up when I’d turned the key. That all-wheel-drive had also saved me in sand and snow. Even so I’ve had a wandering eye since getting on-island. I’ve long wanted a truck, since back in the days when I would hit the road for climbing trips and spent the odd night sleeping in my vehicle. But there was no way that I could justify driving a 4WD truck back in the city.
Here, they’re just so handy for, you know, lugging stuff and getting places. I couldn’t have managed the 16-foot cedar poles and lumber for the cabin without a truck (although one neighbour said that he’d used a $500 VW Rabbit to get big logs off the beach. Not a long and happy life for that car.)
I’ve been impressed by Rich’s brand new Ford F-150 crew cab but the trucks of choice in Tow Town are Toyotas. The local mechanic, Danny, down the road at the Red Barn specializes in them. I’ve heard that sometimes he takes a while to get it back to you since he has no covered work area and needs to wait till there’s a break in the weather to get under your truck, but it’s handy to have a resident mechanic.
Incidentally, a friend told me that the Toyota truck is a favorite of the Taliban in the sandpit. The US soldiers apparently call them, ‘Taliwagons.’ I’ve also seen a good number of Delica 4WD vans up here and I’m sure that should the Taliban ever cast a lazy eye on one of those, they’d be all over them (‘Talivans’), for road tripping and whatnot. But I digress.
Now, my baby’s gone. When I drove my Subee off the road last week, I caused enough body damage that the insurance estimator who flew in from Prince Rupert, wrote it off. You don’t appreciate what you’ve got till it’s gone. Now my hankering for a pickup has diminished and all I can think of is how great my Subee was, even if I did treat her like a dirty truck sometimes.
One outing, I’d loaded her full with firewood that I’d bucked in a clear cut, a deer that I’d shot (and a grouse), gas for the gennie, and 50-litre jugs of drinking water, plus a passenger. All the mud, blood, and sloshing water was caught by the tarp that I’d laid down but all that and the wet rain gear, a chainsaw and gun cases made for a messy, foggy, fume-filled ride with bad sightlines.
I’m glad that being up here has made me less precious about ‘stuff.’ As a good friend would say, “It’s just metal and plastic. Eventually it’ll be junk.” Mine became ‘junk’ sooner than I would have liked but at least nobody was hurt.
I thought that I’d managed to purge all that status consciousness especially related to vehicles in my time here. But the day after the accident, I was biking along the gravel road in the rain, being passed by trucks and felt a little emasculated. Just less of a man for having no vehicle. Which is funny since I don’t judge others in such a way who do without cars. There are a few here who cycle or hitchhike to get around. But I feel like a vehicle is essential equipment, especially living toward the end of the road.
I really don’t know what I’m going to replace my Subee with now. In the interim, Nurse Kelly has kindly lent me her car till she gets back from vacation. Right now, I’m on Craigslist looking at some Taliwagons (I’ve heard that ’85 is a good year).