Glory? It’s true that the wind spiked. But the temperature did too, so much that it outstripped the breeze. A seventy-one degree day in the first week of February is going to qualify as glorious even if it is accompanied by, let’s say, a plague of locusts, much less a little mistral.
I drove to a favorite parking spot out on the edge of the urbanity. There was one other vehicle there and it was remarkable, so I took a picture of it, intending to make it the centerpiece of this post.
Then I came home and accidentally deleted it before capturing it to my desktop. FML.
(Here I use the acronym, because spelling it out completely means something subtly different. Something it is not a good idea to say out loud. I believe in the power of language enough to avoid calling down curses on myself even in jest)
The thing I saw, and don’t have a picture of, was a massive box sitting on a van chassis, and pulling a cargo trailer besides. I mean a little bigger than the largest moving truck you can drive without a Commercial Driver’s License.
It said Renegade Vans on the side, so pretty clearly this was some semi-pro customizer’s own custom rig. Turns out they’re up in Alamosa.
The most shocking thing about it wasn’t really visible in the picture, but I saw it when I pulled out. On the driver’s front quarter panel was the model designation, and it said: E450.
A very heavy-duty Ford van. I guess I knew an E450 existed, in some vague way. But I’m much more familiar with 350s, big capable one-tons, and with 550s, which are serious work trucks that are (I think) all diesels, like those 26-foot moving trucks are.
I don’t know how well a 450 could haul that much weight, but clearly well enough that The Renegade was comfortable bringing it up one big range of mountains and down across another to get here.
It was a mashup of a tiny house and an RV, which sounds like utter perfection and a total ideal. It’s not though. I’ll tell you why.
As a tiny home, at least in the city, it fails because it’s on wheels and is thus verboten by the zoning dweebs. Theoretically you could build a legal house and just use this rig as a second home on the same lot … but in that case, having the space on wheels at all would be mostly a waste.
As an RV, it fails because it’s so big. Even without the cargo trailer, this isn’t the kind of thing you’d want to run up the road to the Cliff Dwellings for a pleasant afternoon of hiking. Even just 20 feet of longbed pickup is kinda sketchy in some of those curves. Also, I would doubt that the van chassis was four-wheel drive, and the pickup is.
It’s much better parked that driving. It is, perhaps the perfect semi-mobile home, maybe for moving between a rural summer lot and a rural winter one. It was impressive, and it was also useless, for my projected use case.
***
Bits of interest on That Other Topic
Russel B. and Jimmy D. Making Common Cause
Masks Do Nothing … Says New Study
One Simple Vitamin Protects You From COVID 72%! – Definitive Study
Hunter Biden ADMITS The Laptop Is His
The Hunter Biden Cover Up Explained in in Under 5 Minutes
***
Okay, and I don’t know if this is more FML, or less, but after all that, it turned out that I fucked up by thinking I fucked up when I didn’t.
Here’s the ‘lost’ picture.
Lady of the Mountain, please smile kindly upon the least of these your fuddled scribe.