Do I need a truck after all? 🛻

Big burly and fuel hungry …

That’s one thing I’ve been thinking more about after test driving that F-350 the other day. I loved much about that truck, besides the color and maybe the fuel economy as the Middle East blows up. But I’ve done okay all winter without a car, as the bus and bike gets me where I need to go, and my parents have generally brought me out to visit once a week.

But don’t you want to camp? I don’t know, truth is I am getting tired of my adventures to wilderness. It seems so much like the same old, visiting the regular haunts in the wilderness, setting up and taking down camp. Having fires, hiking, swimming, smoking pot and drinking beer. Swatting black flies and shivering in the cold and rain. Riding trail and around, watching as the old yogurt containers and paperboard boxes burn up in the fire. Stupid shit like that. I feel like I’ve been there and done that, and there are fewer and fewer new places to explore. It’s just another weekend or week in wilderness.

Truth is I am quite content on staying closer to home, riding my bike places, and living a simple life without the worries and cost of owning a truck. No maintaince or repair visits, no insurance payments or fuel bills. I’ve noticed how much I’ve saved this winter, how my credit card bills are much lower, how it’s so much easier to have extra cash each month to save and invest. While I am not looking at a car payment, and I know the money spent on the truck will quickly be replaced by market growth, I still know that driving once again just adds a lot of cost, and I don’t get the joy I once did from time in wilderness, when it all more of the same. I feel like I’ve pretty much tapped out the places I enjoy camping, and now a days it’s just more and more of the same. Set up, take down, go back home.

Don’t you want to do that great trip to Michigan this summer? Who knows how expensive gas will be come midsummer or even if it’s going to be avaliable. Everybody says summer vacation is great, but I am increasingly bored with it, especially the Finger Lakes. It’s all the same. Wouldn’t I be content enough just staying home, taking short work weeks and spending my days riding places on my bike, doing nature study or just hanging out at a park somewhere reading or laying in my hammock? Honestly, in many ways that seems much more relaxing then having to take down, set up camp, travel and deal with all the stress of that. Keep it simple, save a ton of money, and maybe put off Michigan for another year.