Somehow as the years wore on I developed distaste for the great outdoors. Favoring the smell of FCUK cologne over 99.9% DEET and favoring a feather duvet over a feather sleeping bag. It became apparent that I was becoming an adult. Maybe it was the repetition of going from school to work to bed, I don’t know, but something sucked the adventure out of life. Sure there where fast cars in there with plenty of good times but it seemed like there was a piece of me missing, a piece that I left way up in the forest of B.C.
That is, until I drove a $200, 1993 Toyota 4 Runner.
Honestly, it was love at first sight. There it stood raised with a big cow-push and rust-spots throughout the black truck’s body begging me to get inside and use it’s four-wheel-drive action to roll all over the neighbor’s lawn. Here was a car that stirred the very part of my soul that I thought I had left back in BC. I could not wait to give it a try.
Stepping into the beast was weird, and awkward, thanks to the lift-kit and deceivingly small interior. Which was excellent. Nothing this awesome should ever be too comfortable. When the door closed with the precision of sniper fire I was transported to a world built on purpose. There was no line in the cab that did not need to be there, no style cues that gave me the impression that this was anything but a tank, ready to roll over anything. Even the five-speed manual gearbox felt like it was stirring nothing but shear awesomeness (I won’t even get into the 4-low and 4-high lever as I’m getting sweaty just thinking about it.) Even the door handles, made of high-grade plastic, gave the feeling of being in a very tough and angry truck. The only letdown was the starting noise that the Toyota 3VZE engine made. There was no drama, no sense of event, no feeling that you just hit the awesome button. It just quietly purred in to action.
Then, when it was time to drive the Toyota, all I could think of was the type of trouble I could get into with such an awesome truck. Just looking through the windshield at the rusty cow-push stirred feelings of adventure, of bending the environment to my will. Which, I might add, is a much better feeling than planting trees and having the environment bend you to its will. Everything I saw in the ditch, on the lawns, down alleyways, even steep hills got the gears in my head turning, wondering if the Toyota could tackle the new obstacles. Before I was even out of the driveway I realized that this Toyota 4-Runner wasn’t just a truck – it was a mind game.
Okay okay, I know this sounds awesome and, trust me, it is, but there are some problems. Such as: The ride is bouncy, because the chassis is strait from an old Toyota pickup, the steering wheel feels like its not connected to anything. It’s tippy thanks to the Toyota’s tall, narrow stance. The interior is small for every one of the five passengers, except the dog who has nothing but room in the truck’s generous boot. The gas mileage from the 3.0 V6 is woeful. The four-wheel drive system is not a luxury in the Toyota it is a necessity. Without it the truck is flummoxed by even the smallest skiff of snow, go ahead, throw it into two-wheel drive on any slippery road and you’ll be sliding right into the nearest pole, sideways. And the drivers door scored a 1 star safety rating making it almost as safe as being fired on by anti-tank missiles. So from a levelheaded, reasonable standpoint the Toyota is cramped, unstable, unsafe and harmful to the environment.
Yet, through all of its problems, and there are a lot, the Toyota pets the same part of my brain that caused me to go planting trees again. Somehow this rusted, horrible Toyota gives me such a strong sense of adventure and excitement that I can easily look past the long list of ride and design issues and focus on how awesome this truck makes me feel. Slipping into the Toyota 4-Runner may be like slipping into cold pants in a wet tent. There’s something truly crude about it. But once those pants warm up and your options open you realize you can go anywhere, do anything and that true adventure, unlike childhood, never really ends.