Most cars are lifeless hunks of cold metal on wheels, but my vehicle is different. Like a cowboy and their trusty steed, and my steed is ‘Bubbles’. Bubbles and I, we’ve been all over the West. We ride from sun up to sun down, on the open range, under the milky way, just Bubbles and me.
Meet Bubbles, My Baby Blue Ride
Bubbles is a Toyota Previa, yep, that minivan your friend’s mom drove to soccer practice before Y2K. She resembles a Robin’s egg, baby blue and round, and for a time, I had a bulbous Yakima storage topper for all my camping toys, which is why I named it Bubbles. A bubble-like vehicle plus a bubble-like topper earns the plural form, Bubbles. She is 3 years older than me, born in 1991. Of the Toyota breed with an easy 304,000 miles on the odometer. I traded my friend a snickers bar and a foot rub for it, and I have the bill of sale to prove it. Although I’ve only had her for 60,000 miles of her life we’ve gotten into a lifetime of trouble. Each incident, brick by brick, has built a bond, a bond that mirrors that of, perhaps, Woody and Bullseye.
A Bond Built on Breakdowns
Once, we ran out of gas on a long desolate stretch of Wyoming pavement, only to be rescued by none other than the local pastor and his lovely wife. I’ve been awoken by countless knocks from law enforcement, but only ever received one ticket for illegal camping (before The Dyrt released, of course). A 7 year old, no good dirty rascal, threw a rock through my back window while it was peacefully parked. I think he, wrongfully, assumed it was a junker. The first couple years Bubbles would overheat on mountain passes, turned out to be a great excuse for fresh mountain air. I’ve broken down and been stranded for 2 nights in a parking lot in Oregon. I probably sweat a total of 5 gallons on road trips until I realized the air conditioning worked just fine.
When Your Home is Also Your Ride
Living inside my minivan ramps up the bonding even further. Like going all in on a parlay bet, as both a roof over my head and my wheels on the road, the stakes are raised.
I lost that bet as I was driving to Mt Hood, just 45 minutes away I started to smell something burning, then the gas pedal went limp. The brakes still worked, thankfully, and I turned into the left turn lane and stopped at the light. Cars behind honked and sped around as I sat idle and waved them passed. On hold with the Triple A customer service agent, a car pulled up next to me to confirm if I was stuck. She yelled, “hold tight, I’ll come give you a push.” Another stranger pulled alongside, “my transition blew the other week, I got you!”
My pit crew was assembled. The left turn signal lit green, I dropped the car into neutral, and the 2 strangers pushed from the back. I pushed while steering through the open front window. Flintstones style, we pulled into the Grocery Outlet parking lot, where I established my home for the next 2 nights. The transmission rebuild would have to wait because the next 2 days looked to be the last sunny, bluebird days for a while. Indebted to public transportation, I finally made it to that pointy volcano, and then proceeded to climb and snowboard 2 different routes.
Parking Lot Sunsets Still Count
Some think the whole point of camping is about a sunset behind beautiful mountains, but I think it’s about small battles of adversity. A sunset behind a neon grocery store sign can be beautiful too, as long as you have a soccer chair and your feet ache enough. Climb a mountain or two and all of a sudden that parking lot is a paradise of pavement. That particular night the soul was indeed full, the mission accomplished, the final boss slayed, car problems be damned.
What Van Life Teaches You
You learn a lot living this way. Constant camping teaches you that you don’t need everything – just a sleeping bag, a water tank, a cooler, and a pee bottle. I’ve learned to use what I have – old silicon charging cables can be reused as cord and duct tape fixes everything from blisters to hiking poles. I’ve deepened my understanding of the natural world – knowing where the sun travels through the sky helps to avoid transforming your AC-less car into a sauna. I credit my resourcefulness to camping with Bubbles.
Junkyard Glow Up
A few years back, a patch of impatience and a bit of ice busted my bumper, bent my hood, and destroyed my radiator. The radiator was fixed thankfully, which turned out to be the issue causing the overheating. God works in mysterious ways y’all. But even a standard fix is difficult for a 35 year old discontinued car, parts are hard or impossible to find. I drove with a bent hood and no bumper for weeks, as if my stallion lost a fight to a clydesdale, broken nose and lost tooth. It was in this gruesome state that the aforementioned 7 year old rascal mistook my beloved for a lifeless piece of junk, and flung a rock at my back window. My fellow Previa owning friend was in utter shock at Bubbles appearance so she promised to share the coordinates to a secret Previa junkyard as long as I stopped hurting her. I obliged and started wrenching, ripping car parts off old Previa carcasses. I installed a mismatched white hood and finally ripped all the duct tape covering the shattered back window to replace it. For the bumper, I got creative and bolted a log to the frame. The log was forgotten, unused after the construction of a log cabin. It was lonely, and just like Bubbles had done for me, it provided that poor piece of wood a home, a purpose.
We’re Not Done Yet
I’m doing what I can to keep her truckin’. While most go to NAPA, I go to the junkyard, and probably more often than most people go to NAPA. Anything it takes to keep those pistons pumping and that fresh mountain air blowing through her plastic grill. It’s just how she raised me.
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