I’ve owned 2 cars in my adult life - a Jeep Wrangler and a Landcruiser. I’ve driven other cars, but these are the only two that have had my name on the title. These are some stories of those 2 vehicles.
Jeep Wrangler
The first car I owned was a 2013 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. 4 midnight-blue doors, a roof rack to hold my fly rods, and an unbranded exhaust that sounded musical. I bought it from my father in 2018 and shipped it to Colorado. I was a junior in college at the time, playing lacrosse and studying at a school known for a million things other than fun. Having that car changed my life.
The schedule at school was: wake up, go to class, go to practice, eat dinner, go to bed. Rinse and repeat Monday-Friday. We practiced on Saturdays in the offseason. We even practiced Saturdays AND Sundays that one offseason our coach made life hell, and we played games on Saturdays in the spring. We flew across the country for nearly every away game… which meant getting “home” late on Saturday night, resting on Sunday, and doing it all again come Monday. That’s the kind of grind I’ve not come close to since I graduated. I enjoyed it for the most part, but there was a lot of shit at that school that made me question what I was doing there. I felt like I was moving through the days with no control. I hated Colorado for the first two years I was in college. It was brutally cold, the furthest from home I’d ever been, the hardest I’d worked in my life, and it wasn’t fun.
But when that Jeep trailered out to the Rocky Mountains, things were different. I spent my time differently. I went new places. I had fun. I fell in love with Colorado. I felt new.
Those keys were hotter than a $2 pistol. When I turned that engine over, I felt like I could escape. Even if it was just on Sundays, the one day I got to myself, it was enough to keep me going. I’d wake up on Sundays with a new destination in the GPS and finally had something to look forward to. That’s about the same time I got into photography… I figured if I was going to all these beautiful places, I wanted a way to remember them.
One Saturday, we got back from a game with just enough time to make something of the night. Some guys were planning to go out, others to just go to dinner and relax. Those things are both fine with me, but on that particular day I wanted something more. I put “Great Sand Dunes National Park” in Apple Maps and set off. I remember stopping at a gas station just outside of the campus, looking at the 3+ hour drive ahead of me and thinking, “is this worth it?”. I went anyway.
My one stop was in Walsenburg, CO to buy a 6 pack of Budweiser. I got to the Sand Dunes well after the sun had gone down, bringing with me those 6 beers and a plan to photograph the Milky Way over the dunes at midnight.
I got there, hiked for what felt like forever, and sat atop one of the dunes. I cracked a beer, got my camera ready, and waited patiently in the freezing, gusting wind. Then I waited some more… and more… and more. No stars. Turns out I miscalculated when the Milky Way would come out, and I was tired of freezing my ass off in a wasteland of microscopic rocks. I trudged back to the car and pitched my tent to try and sleep.
That wind kept me up all damn night. I slept as long as I could… no more than 3 hours… and woke up around 4AM. I got out of the tent to pee and was greeted with the Milky Way rising over the mountains. I set up the camera frantically. I didn’t have time to hike back up the dunes to get the shot I planned, so I sat on top of my Jeep and photographed myself.
I stayed there until the sun crested. My one stop on the way back was at a shitty diner, where I ordered coffee and huevos rancheros with green chili. The food was terrible and the coffee even worse, but I still remember every part of that experience 6 years later. It was worth it.
That Jeep took me to every corner of the state from there on. It was far from perfect - chipped paint, dented rock sliders and bumpers, and Colorado pinstripes all down the sides. It was loud and uncomfortable. It was terrible on gas. The heat stopped working well in 2021, which made winter fishing trips miserable because my waders had a leak and I’d go home with wet socks and pants. I couldn’t see out of the tinted windows at night and backed up into a million things. The passenger side door became so frozen that Hercules himself would’ve strained to close it. The dash was lit up like a Christmas tree because I deleted the electronic sway bar, fried the ABS sensor trying to remove the frozen wheel hubs, or some other maniacal project that I deemed an “improvement”. Yet, it’s my favorite thing I’ve ever owned. I spent a lot of time and big boy money upgrading and working on it… solely so it could carry me further and faster across the country than these 2 legs could.
We parted ways at 192,000 miles, and had it not been totaled in a hit and run, I would’ve driven it until the wheels fell off.
Lexus LX450
I bought a Lexus LX450, the up-badged version of the Toyota Landcruiser, after the Jeep was dead and gone. I haven’t even had it a full year yet, and it’s arguably further from perfect condition than my Jeep was. It’s older than me by 1 year, feels like a small sailboat on a windy day, has 242,000 miles on the clock, a terrible speaker system, and is even worse on gas. Surprise, surprise… I love it. It’s rugged and simple - it’s got what I need (maybe even less than I need) and nothing extra. It doesn’t have a million systems and sensors waiting to break. I can work on it myself without needing special dealership tools, and that makes me feel like a cowboy taking care of his mustang.
The thing that makes you love and feel connection to a car is the character: the things that make it special, make it stand out, and make it yours. For me, that comes from all the imperfections. The shit that only you know from owning, driving, and living with it every day. When someone else gets in the driver’s seat and you have to give them a pre-flight checklist of what does/doesn’t work, that’s character.
My friends and I drove it to Arizona on its first long trip, and it didn’t miss a beat. Sure, it’s hotter than hell in the backseat without AC vents… and the Bluetooth cassette player I bought doesn’t have enough battery to last the whole trip… but parts of the trip would be a lot less memorable if that weren’t the case. I wouldn’t remember listening to music through a portable speaker for half the drive, or stopping to get a cold ice cream sandwich in the California desert.
It won’t ever be perfect, and I don’t want it to be. I’ve already poured time and money into it. That's the kind of territory you step into when you buy a car that’s 28 years old. You lose time. You bleed money. You learn how to fix things yourself. You feel like you’re missing out on life when that 10 minute YouTube video turns into a 3 hour job. It’s part of the deal if you want it to carry you faster and further than your legs can… But you’re better for it in a lot of ways. If you enjoy a car because of the memories it makes, then none of the tradeoffs and sacrifices matter all that much. If everything was perfect, there’d be no character.
Many more miles, picnics on the tailgate, and adventures to come.
Thanks for reading, and thanks to
for the inspiration to write this. He did it first:
This is awesome. We have a 100 series (The Gray Wolf) that was our primary adventuremobile for a decade before getting a truck. As you describe, it's far from perfection, but its perfect. Simple. Goes anywhere and everywhere we've ever asked. My favorite thing about the old land cruisers apart fro the no nonsense mechanics is the tailgate. Countless picnics have happened right there. One of the only vehicles I've never gotten stuck in! Fantastic read. Thanks!
Endless adventures!