You know your country is in bad shape when two months in a hostile wasteland filled with dangerous animals, the relics of a once thriving industrial economy, and aggressive bands of roving jackasses feels like an improvement.
Picking up where I left off last time, I bought a ‘99 Jeep Cherokee (because they’re cheap, tough, made in America, and I can fix the stuff that breaks on it) I spent a week building it out (crushing my former vehicle build time record) and for six weeks I did my best impression of a Nepalese bus driver while quoting Buzz Lightyear and humming the theme to Indiana Jones whenever we started listing a bit too far to leeward.
In all seriousness though, my general philosophy of not doing really stupid things on purpose so your luck doesn’t run out when you end up having to do them by accident, works just as well in four-wheel-drive as it does sailing or kayaking. Somewhat surprisingly though we routinely drove stuff that people in ultra-capable Jeep Rubicons backed off of, which makes sense I guess, you wouldn’t want to get a scratch on your new $45,000 rig.
We saw most of the desert animals, some tight canyons, and various pretty places, which was pretty cool although definitely bittersweet being so sick with the chronic illness all the time. Not being able to hike just shreds my sanity. In retrospect I should’ve brought my .22 so I could carry on the desert tradition of shooting cans.
Something that wasn’t so cool was the Trump graffiti at various historic sites and Trump related entries in the National park register books. It’s just weird and not something you ever would’ve seen my parents Nixon-supporting Reagan-loving generation doing. Of course my parents generation weren’t super cool with a nearly $3 trillion deficit either so I guess a lot has changed.
So yeah, back to, um, civilization? I guess. Building boats and just trying to be a good person every day doesn’t really feel like enough these days, but I’m not really sure what else to do.
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