Too often these days I say … 🛻

• Last visit to Piseco-Powley for Big Red
• Last visit to the Finger Lakes for Big Red
• Last visit to Schoharie for Big Red
• Last oil change for Big Red

In many ways I don’t know if this all is true, but there is kind of sadness knowing the era of Big Red is coming to an end. That there will be no more of “X” adventure in the future. But I want a controlled decommissioning of him, when I can calmly unpack and take gear off him and preparation of moving to a new rig, while I still have a vehicle in good working order that I can take to car dealerships to learn what vehicles are available and ultimately trade in. I don’t expect to get a lot of money for a rusty-old 14 1/2 year old truck, but that’s not the point – it’s to retire him – before I’m left on the roadside of some rural road with no easy way to get all my equipment home.

Things were different in my late 20s and early 30s. I had the lift kit on the truck 10 years ago this December, I bought Red during early October 2011. I am now in mid-40s, maybe still a bit of a wild cowboy, enjoying many nights in wilderness. And I’m not totally ready to toss my hat, indeed I plan to get a camper shell on my next truck and move the solar and other equipment on the new truck. But it will never be as big or lifted. It was a fun decade – actually decade and a half – yet soon it will just memory and photos. Things will be a lot tighter for packing gear and camping, but it also will more snug and a heck of a lot easier to park in tight little parking lots and narrow city streets. And at least a few years of worry-free driving.

It’s not that I haven’t had sleepless nights with Big Red. Or drank endless amounts of beer and smoked some weed. Or had some fire, burned some wood and other things. And indeed, I will look back with fond memories of times that were. It’s not like I am giving up travel when I get my new rig, which inevitably will be more reliable, more fuel efficent and a heck of a lot easier to drive. Indeed I am planning that trip to Michigan next summer and probably West Virigina and New River Gorge next autumn. But it will not be same. Any new truck I get will be much smaller, not have all memories both good and bad over the years. There will be not another Big Red, just like I will never have enough day in my late 20s through my early 40s. Things just were different back then.

The next truck will likely last through my mid-to-late 50s and my early retirement. While I am still traveling and exploring, possibly doing the furthest and most interesting trips with my new rig, it will be a definite next step in my life. The next rig probably inevitably wll be used for commuting and probably at least starting out my to be built homestead, though eventually even it will get used up and need ot be replaced. New memories, but it won’t be the way it was.