Even the brand is a distant memory now. Known as a Jackaroo in Australia, a word that essentially means cowboy—though what cows and “roos” have in common is beyond me—but hey it’s Oz—they make their own rules in the land of the ridiculous girly-man “ute” (just think El Camino if you’ve never been down under). Incidentally, Jackaroo is also the name of a memorable gay porn flick, but I digress. Troopy was an underpowered 4-wheel drive Japanese mini-bus that burned through three clutches in ten years (this is San Francisco) but had a loyal following in its day, including me. It was the antidote to both American trucks (yuk) and the ubiquitous Toyota 4-Runner, the overpriced toy for frat boys. It was the perfect fit to my self-defined niche of outdoorsy and unpretentious, big enough to throw almost anything in the back and head for the mountains, without the trappings of soccer mom SUVs.

Of course the Trooper wasn’t particularly well designed or built, but men of my generation don’t buy cars based on Consumer Reports Magazine. It’s all about the right image, projecting a clear set of “values” to the rest of the highway—the rainbow flag sticker helped too. Speaking of Consumer Reports, there were a few years that they wouldn’t rate the Trooper at all because it was “too prone to rollover”—yet only a couple years later the giant Explorer roll-over scandal hit the news—vindication! Our black Trooper had a big Rhino guard mounted up front just to butch it up a bit. I was always terrified driving in the city that it would become a pedestrian-straying-from-crosswalk-guard.

But, a car is just a car and this blog is about places that have shaped my life, yet I feel compelled to at least acknowledge the vehicle that conveyed us to some of the most life-shaping places in the west for more than a decade—and also we loved it. It was one of those things that I just knew I had to have for several years before I pressured my partner into buying one. It was an awkward box with a high stance and big eyes that shouted “Hey I’m working, I don’t care what I look like,” and it was relatively cheap. Ours though was a 1993, after the corners had been “softened,” which I hated for being impure in concept, but it was also tarted up enough on the inside to make up for this aerodynamic transgression against the perfect box—and it was brand new. It easily plowed through a foot of snow on a quest for Bagby Hot Springs on its maiden road trip to Oregon, but it was later trips to the desert southwest that cemented our love affair with the car and the desert.

I grew up driving a 4-wheel drive pickup (my dad’s) and wasn’t afraid of a challenging road. I had a general idea what I could and couldn’t do—but also a healthy dose of respect especially since I knew little about mechanical stuff—as in fixing it. Stupidly, our first time to Death Valley was in summer. After an hour or so of blissful scenic driving we started wondering just how bad the AC was on this car. It was clearly not keeping pace—but the car was new and we didn’t know it that well yet. We stopped somewhere near the dunes for a walk about, but when I started to open the door—just 4 inches or so—the blast of heat hit me. I closed the door instantly, and I think I said something like: “we have to get out of here, we could die” which we did–got out that is. Only later did we discover that the temperature at the bottom of the Valley that day was 130 degrees. No wonder we had the whole valley to ourselves. We went back there though many times as it’s an amazing place, in no small part because it’s scary. Once driving much to fast on a rocky back road we came down hard into a wash and blew a tire. We understood then about that awkward spare mounted to the back, as the car was packed with gear. We camped on a ridge above the “Racetrack,” one of the most beautiful places on earth with a mystery in its name. Straight lines are etched across the crust of cracked dry playa, presumably a result of rocks being moved over the surface by the wind when the mud is wet and slick. Hard to believe as these are not small pebbles, but nevertheless the lines are there. The road up from the Racetrack to Saline Valley is one of the two scariest drives we attempted in the “Trooper years.” The guidebooks and park maps warn that this road should only be attempted in “short wheelbase 4-wheel drive vehicles” which a Trooper is definitely not. Hairpin curves that cling to crumbling cliffs and a deeply rutted roadbed make the first few miles a sweat-inducing chill-ride. I can only imagine what it must have like for Rikk who never attempted driving on the back roads. Reaching Saline Valley itself, and the hot springs, took us through washes of soft dust more than a foot deep. This is the kind of dust one sees on cars all over town as I write, after Burning Man, left dirty to say: I was there—like a concert wrist band. It permeates every crevice of the interior. Even while driving through with everything closed up tight you can see it hanging in the air inside the car. The hot springs were weird and disappointing, the kind with self-appointed “caretakers” living on site. We camped there, sleeplessly, through a windstorm that tried hard to rip our tent from its tethers. We returned years later to the Racetrack, in the Mercedes years, but never again attempted that climb up the mountain to Saline. That was a very different experience in 2007 with GPS and a satellite help phone that actually worked (we had to test it). The operator was able to tell us exactly where we were, which was both reassuring and sad.

Meanwhile back in the 90s, the other truly scary drive was in Arches National Park. After many miles of boring washboard road (yes I do know what creates that effect, do you?) we reached the base of a sandstone mountainside. At first it appeared the road just ended there, but soon black stripes leading up the face of it came into focus and told a different story. We stopped briefly, not to rethink as we’d used more than half a tank of gas, but to put the car into 4-wheel drive. It had that old-school system where you actually had to stop to engage it. I know there are many different systems and I don’t understand exactly what Trooper’s was, except that no computers were involved, and that there was never anywhere we tried to go that it couldn’t. So I chose to believe it was the serious kind, and it did go up the face of that rock mountain. It was difficult to see the ground and there was no definitive trail. At the top was more tricky solid rock and sand, but there was obviously no way back except forward. Roads like this tend to be designated one way which is a good thing. Suddenly the road headed over what appeared to be a small cliff. We stopped and got out to strategize. I believe we were then officially into what’s known as “technical driving.” The smooth rock outcrop rounded its way over the edge toward soft sand at its base about 50 feet below. From above it appeared to be completely vertical for the last 20 feet or so. It was difficult from that vantage point to comprehend how the tires would touch down before the front bumper—or rather the Rhino guard. With visions of standing the car on its nose and rolling it onto its roof, we proceeded to creep down the rock face. Of course it wasn’t really vertical and the tires did touch first thanks to the very steep “approach angle” of the Trooper and we were off again.

This ugly black box on wheels took us to beautiful remote places that couldn’t be reached otherwise, to all the national parks of the west, our favorite backpacking hikes and to nearby weekend getaways that became ever more common as the 90s came to a close. The Russian River was our preferred frequent getaway to escape the summer fog, and for a few years in the early 2000s Troopy-doop hauled us and a ton of stuff back and forth on the 2 hour drive to our little mid-century cabin on Austin Creek every weekend. On one very late very dark Friday night an animal suddenly appeared in the road in front of us, but just as I was about to break I recognized it as a possum and in complete autopilot mode my foot came away from the break and I ran it over. You see where I grew up–in the country–my dad would hit them on purpose, and this childhood training just kicked in. Rikk was outraged, not buying my non-indigenous varmint defense.

One night on the way back to The City Trooper unceremoniously died for good on the side of Cazadero Highway—no shoulders—I pushed it into the ditch as far off the pavement as possible. One of the few places left in California with no cell reception, I walked back four miles to the cabin and the next morning called for a tow. I never saw Troop again, trading it in was a matter of telling the Mercedes dealer what garage it could be found at. I always knew the whole idea of “trade-in” was mythical anyway, a fake numbers game, but I didn’t care—dead is dead. A little more than 10 years, 200,000 miles, countless adventures and a mere two dead mammals passed without so much as a thank you.

That flapping sound coming from under the hood with the AC fan on had hounded us all the way from Yellowstone—where incidentally my birthday August 25th is celebrated with Christmas decorations in honor of a freak snow storm early in the 20th century that left guests stranded at the lodge on that summer date. By Salt Lake City the noise was as unbearable as the heat so we found an Isuzu dealer and had them take a look. An hour or so later the mechanic came into the waiting room holding a hubcap like a serving tray. Inside was a severely beaten up large mouse that had found its way into the engine compartment to keep warm while we were camping the night before and then got caught in the heater fan—mammal number 2.