After bidding farewell to the 1988 Tercel that came free to us from our friends at BackYardFeast a few years ago, we needed a second vehicle. I've been taking our 1999 Ford F150 to work in Tofino every day, leaving my poor husband stranded in Ucluelet. When I told him I wanted to give the Tercel to The Good People at Stellar Coffee, who have been borrowing it through the winter, and that we would need to acquire a commuter vehicle for me, Dan set to work straight away on searching the listings for used vehicles.
He found me my truck. A 1986 Nissan 720 4WD. It's 25 years old and rusty, of course, but with some solid TLC in the next few months (Dan loves to tinker), it will be in good shape.
He and a friend brought it back from Nanaimo yesterday and today I finally got to see it and sit in it and drive it for the first time. Lots of things to get used to. I've never owned my own truck before, I've only ever had cars. And an older truck that has 4WD... well, it was simply begging to be taken out on the logging roads.
We jumped in and headed straight for West Main. I wanted to see what the truck could do. Our weather conditions couldn't be any worse with all the rain coming down and high winds, so it was perfect for a test drive. West main has some pretty wide and deep potholes and they are all FULL of water right now.
I discovered that it's hard to go slow in this truck. Do you ever experience that? Like it's a real effort to keep yourself to the speed limit. Or safe driving speed. Um...
Dan discovered a new side of me today. He didn't know how... shall we say... reckless I can be when I'm behind the wheel. We were never unsafe, I had complete control of the vehicle. It was pretty fun, actually.
So we're screaming along West Main (I don't actually know how fast we were going, but I was in third gear and the gears are tall.)(Dan says I was doing 70-80k)(Really?) at a speed that was "faster than Dan would have gone". He thought I was on a mission to break it. Well, not exactly. I just wanted to see what this truck could handle, how hard I could push it. It's good, see, to know what your vehicle can do because if you're ever in a situation where you need to, say, slam on the brakes on a gravel road, how much distance do you need to stop?
Okay so I was going a tad fast. If I was the passenger, I would have been hurling up my breakfast but being in the driver's seat meant I had the steering wheel to hold on to. (There is a HOLYSHIT handle for passengers, in case I haven't completely scared you away from driving with me.)(Ha.) There were some potholes that were more like ponds, big enough for small fish, I'm sure. One memorable pond was about 20 feet wide and I (according to Dan) was in the air before landing in the puddle (really?) and took it a lot faster than he would have.
We turned down a side road to see how the 4WD would handle. Tons of branches in the way, no problem. Drove right through them. A few felled logs on the road, 8" diameter, I simply drove right over them. I love having a vehicle with balls. It seems to bring out my inner redneck.
We got to the end of ths road and had to back up to turn around. It was then that we realized the cap was gone. As in the cap that goes over the bed of the truck. Now to be fair, it wasn't secured very well (only with a few wimpy clamps) and we did hit some bumps pretty hard. So we went a-looking for it, retracing our steps.
Imagine our surpise when after a good 8km (5mi), we finally came upon it!
Oopsie!
He found me my truck. A 1986 Nissan 720 4WD. It's 25 years old and rusty, of course, but with some solid TLC in the next few months (Dan loves to tinker), it will be in good shape.
He and a friend brought it back from Nanaimo yesterday and today I finally got to see it and sit in it and drive it for the first time. Lots of things to get used to. I've never owned my own truck before, I've only ever had cars. And an older truck that has 4WD... well, it was simply begging to be taken out on the logging roads.
We jumped in and headed straight for West Main. I wanted to see what the truck could do. Our weather conditions couldn't be any worse with all the rain coming down and high winds, so it was perfect for a test drive. West main has some pretty wide and deep potholes and they are all FULL of water right now.
I discovered that it's hard to go slow in this truck. Do you ever experience that? Like it's a real effort to keep yourself to the speed limit. Or safe driving speed. Um...
Dan discovered a new side of me today. He didn't know how... shall we say... reckless I can be when I'm behind the wheel. We were never unsafe, I had complete control of the vehicle. It was pretty fun, actually.
So we're screaming along West Main (I don't actually know how fast we were going, but I was in third gear and the gears are tall.)(Dan says I was doing 70-80k)(Really?) at a speed that was "faster than Dan would have gone". He thought I was on a mission to break it. Well, not exactly. I just wanted to see what this truck could handle, how hard I could push it. It's good, see, to know what your vehicle can do because if you're ever in a situation where you need to, say, slam on the brakes on a gravel road, how much distance do you need to stop?
Okay so I was going a tad fast. If I was the passenger, I would have been hurling up my breakfast but being in the driver's seat meant I had the steering wheel to hold on to. (There is a HOLYSHIT handle for passengers, in case I haven't completely scared you away from driving with me.)(Ha.) There were some potholes that were more like ponds, big enough for small fish, I'm sure. One memorable pond was about 20 feet wide and I (according to Dan) was in the air before landing in the puddle (really?) and took it a lot faster than he would have.
We turned down a side road to see how the 4WD would handle. Tons of branches in the way, no problem. Drove right through them. A few felled logs on the road, 8" diameter, I simply drove right over them. I love having a vehicle with balls. It seems to bring out my inner redneck.
We got to the end of ths road and had to back up to turn around. It was then that we realized the cap was gone. As in the cap that goes over the bed of the truck. Now to be fair, it wasn't secured very well (only with a few wimpy clamps) and we did hit some bumps pretty hard. So we went a-looking for it, retracing our steps.
Imagine our surpise when after a good 8km (5mi), we finally came upon it!
Truck sans cap
Dan says it looks like it's been broken before
Self portrat. Me in driver seat.
Parked in front of our house. See? We made it home, safe & sound.
LMAO You're my kind of driver!!
ReplyDeleteI comment . . . I just tend to play catch up most of the time ;)
ReplyDeleteThis was totally awesome BTW