Roads From the Ashes. Megan Edwards
a Jamboree, a boxy-looking vehicle about the length of two sedans. It was white, with corrugated siding and a front end like a pickup truck. We climbed inside, and the salesman invited us to sit down on the settee.
Realizing immediately that we were ignorant “first-time buyers,” the salesman launched into a well-rehearsed 30-minute lecture about recreational vehicles. By the time he wrapped up, we’d learned the difference between a Class “A” (a bus) and a Class “C” (the kind we were sitting in). We knew about GVW (gross vehicle weight) and how important it was to know how much stuff you can load into a vehicle before the axles break. We knew about water tanks and propane tanks, generators and refrigerators, wind shear and suspension, inverters and converters, water pumps and fuel pumps.
While he was talking, I was taking in my surroundings. It was pretty spacious, I thought. I could live in this. There was a bedroom in the back, and another bed over the cab. The galley looked adequate, and the dining table seated four. What more did we need?
Suddenly Mark asked, “Does anybody make an RV with four-wheel drive?”
The salesman shrugged. “Well, actually there is one company that does. It’s expensive, and it has no resale value, so I can’t imagine anybody buying it, but there’s one sitting on the lot here somewhere.”
That did it. We thanked the salesman and said we’d be back if the Jamboree turned out to be the right truck for us. “Whatever you decide, I’d sure like to have a shot at the deal,” he said forlornly as we departed. He sat back down in the folding chair, and we set off to find the four-by-four.
We asked the guard. “Oh, that thing,” he said. “It’s about a hundred yards around that bend to the right. You’ll recognize it when you see it.” We walked down the road and looked at all the vehicles with new eyes. “Class ‘A’,” I said, pointing to a huge bus with a patriotic mural on the side and an enormous satellite dish on the roof. “I can’t see us driving around in anything that conspicuous.”
“Well, I can’t see us driving around in a Jamboree,” said Mark. “It looked nice, but it had a flimsy feel. Did you noticed how far it leaned when we stepped inside? It’s basically made of plywood and fiberglass. Doesn’t anybody build these things like aircraft?”
We rounded the bend and stopped dead in our tracks. “That’s it,” said Mark, “Look at that thing.” I looked. It was huge, it had six enormous tires and a big winch on the front bumper. The body was smooth and streamlined, and five driving lamps each had covers that read “Super Off-Roader.” Mark smiled, and we headed toward the office to find somebody to let us inside.
You Say You Want a Revolution
But here I must digress. I’ve got to issue a warning to all those who say they want a revolution. This was November 10, 1993. The preceding December, I’d turned forty. It hit me like Dorothy’s house hit the witch.
I was morose for days. I went about my daily drill, but I was a rusty tin man, forcing unwilling joints to move in directions they resisted. Life was toil. It wasn’t unbearable, though, and I kept at it. I kept putting on nylons and checking my voice mail.
I told myself I wanted a revolution. I said it silently, but it shrieked in my head. It kept yelling for ten months. For ten months, I kept putting on nylons and checking my voice mail.
Then my house burned down. I got my revolution.
I didn’t have to accept its offer of transformation. I could have put everything back, down to last pair of panty hose. It would have been easier. It would have made lots of people more comfortable.
But how many revolutions do you get in life? I hadn’t had enough to waste one. However it might turn out, I’d turned enough degrees to have a whole new view in front of me.
It seemed monumental, but the fire, it turns out, was just a little baby vortex, a personal whirl that invited me to a new life. I didn’t know as I stepped inside a Super Off-Roader at Traveland that I was on the edge of a Charybdis of global dimensions.
You were, too. We all were. 1994 was the year we heard “Information Superhighway” until we were sick of it. It was the year we got to know Bill Gates, and began tossing “Internet” into casual conversation.
America hit the road to cyberspace in 1994, beginning a revolution we’ve only begun to understand. It envelopes the world, and we can’t ignore it. If we keep putting on nylons and checking voice mail, we’ll be left in the dust.
The five years we’ve spent letting America’s highways unroll underneath our wheels are the same five years Americans have moved into virtual realms. We’ve watched it happen in Eastern Oregon, northern Idaho, southern Texas, the Florida keys. No one’s driven a golden spike, but it’s no less monumental than the completion of the transcontinental railroad.
But enough. Please join us as we step inside the Super Off-Roader. Take a look at the ultra-macho truck we decided to call home for the six months that never ended. It’s about to embark on a journey you’ve been on, too.
We caught the saleswoman just as she was about to leave. She got back out of her car, unlocked her office, and took the key to the Super Off-Roader off a hook on a peg board. We walked back out to the monster, and she unlocked the coach door.
As the door opened, two steps magically slid out from under the body and clicked into place. To anyone who knows anything about motorhomes, this would come as small surprise. To us, it was one more new thing, and I have to say, it made the Super Off-Roader seem terrifically cutting edge. We stepped up and inside.
“Take your time looking around,” called the saleswoman from outside. “I’m going back to the office to get a video to show you. I’ll be right back.” The door clicked shut with satisfying heft. “This is more like it,” said Mark.
To the right of the door was a bleached oak panel of electronic entertainment devices, including a television, a CD changer and a video player. A table flanked by two benches faced us, and to our left was the galley. Over the cab was a bunk that looked big enough for two. The cab itself held four captain’s chairs.
A hallway led to the back room, which housed a table and a wrap-around sofa against three walls. All in all, the Super Off-Roader looked like a cross between a mobile military command post and a party wagon. It was the ultimate in manliness, the sort of rig guys dream about taking their buddies hunting in, no women allowed.
I sat down at the table, trying the thing on for style. It felt like a status symbol. It felt like a machine designed for the same men who buy red convertibles and marry trophy wives, it was a quantum leap beyond the bus-like monster with the satellite dish and the patriotic mural. “This thing defines conspicuous consumption,” I thought to myself, “And it positively screams Southern California.”
It was also built like an aircraft. The carpeted walls sloped in at the top, and the cabinets were cut to fit. Nothing was corrugated. Nothing was fiberboard. “Sleek” says it the best.
The saleswoman returned with the video. She slid it into the video player and said, “Now you can see the Trailblazer in action.” The Trailblazer. Now we knew its name, and for the next ten minutes we watched two men take a similar machine over boulders and across streams to music that sounded like a cross between “Rawhide” and “Chariots of Fire.”
When it was over, Mark asked the saleswoman a bunch of questions, but I knew we weren’t going to be doing any more shopping. 99.99% of motor homes built in America are designed with 60-ish couples in mind. They’re suburban split-levels squeezed and shrunk to fit inside a rectangle eight feet wide and 30 feet long. They’ve got upholstered window treatments, matching throw pillows, and built-in spice racks.
The Trailblazer was more like a ski hut reduced to fit on a one-ton Ford truck chassis, which of course didn’t match our profile, either. But Corey, the saleswoman, had divulged another piece of information in passing. “You can follow your Trailblazer from chassis to completion,” she’d said. “We can customize the interior for you.”
“You mean