YOUR TURN. What Do You Want? And What Do You Call Your Rides?
Meet Jimmy, the Leprechaun, and Bikey, three of Ruby van Jangles’s predecessors, in today’s list story.
The prompt. What are some vehicles you’ve named?
Jimmy was a copper-colored Mitsubishi Montero I loved something fierce. After a bright orange VW Super Beetle I never named and lost ( a whole different story), Jimmy was the second car I bought. I was nineteen and furious with loss, a roiling, untamed fury that, with no place to land, made me do outrageous things. Like taking Jimmy off road in the desert and making the boxy little four-cylinder rock hop. Once, we really flew, and for a second, I thought I’d gone too far, and we’d roll, and with the rocky terrain below, it could be bad, really bad. Then all four tires touched down. I whooped, so exhilarated I could hardly conjure chagrin when I saw the terror in the eyes of the man who would become my husband in the passenger seat, his white knuckles gripping the oh-shit bar.
The Leprechaun. Shelter, when I was broken, again. That’s what I think of when I think of the Leprechaun. I lay along the pink shag carpet, lengthwise, and let my body shake with wracking sobs. In the belly of that 26-foot RV, I picked myself up, listened to Norah Jones’s Feels Like Home, and cooked artichoke and spaghetti Bolognese on the propane stove while drinking cheap wine or, alternatively, to Ani DiFranco’s Dilate and raged. I parked next to a river and took my camping chair, a six-pack, and a fishing pole without bait to its banks. I sat smoking cigarettes and letting the stream carry it all away, at least for a moment—my failed marriage to the man with the fearful eyes, the job I’d resigned from in a fit of indignation, the injustice of a friend taken from this world before we had even started to map out this adult life. Unless you count the Ford Festiva I “lived” in for a week when I was sixteen, the Leprechaun was my first home on wheels.
Bikey McBikerson II makes it clear that my naming skills have aged like fine wine. This lipstick red women’s Trek hybrid was my ride for two of my three car-free years in Santa Barbara (after Bikey I). She carried me and two loaded panniers down the Oregon Coast one summer. And she, like her namesake was stolen—this time off the back of Ruby the van while I slept. Until I woke. But that’s a story for another post. Bikeys, I miss you both.
Do you name your vehicles too? What are some of their names? Share in the comments if you’d like.
I love list prompts. They generate memories that haven’t surfaced in years, help me know myself, and sometimes lead to essays like “My Living Room Is the World” (prompt: storms you’ve experienced). To write along, set a timer for ten minutes, just go, let the pen/fingers/voice fly.
It’s been rolling around in my head that I want a Rolling Desk section about you
I want to get to know you, the folx reading these posts.
I want to seduce you with words and offerings to stay, to return, to engage.
I want to hear what’s working for you in your life—what makes you laugh, lightens a tough day, opens you up—and what’s not working, what’s hurting.
I want to grow—to take myself less seriously, to be playful and flexible, to face my blindspots, to connect.
I want to know what you want.
How? I wonder, ideas popping up like the Seattle skyline as I cross the I-5 bridge over Lake Union or the sudden shock of amber, vermillion, sulfur layers at the top of a steep hill dropping along the Scenic Hwy 12 back way into Grand Escalante Staircase. What do people want from writers these days as the way we write and interact shifts?
I could, it occurs to me, just ask. So, I’ll put it to you in the poll (it’s end of the post if you wanna get straight to it). Or first a sampling of the options to help you choose.
What’s making your life simpler, more succulent, more savory?
Here’s three from me:
This recipe on IG from chef Natalia Rudin. It’s really simply. Like six ingredients, very little prep, fast. And it’s delicious in a way that feels decadent. I need that from my food every once in a while.
This song, “Cerca De Ti,” by Hermanos Gutierrez. For me, it starts with a touch of longing that’s answered by a gentle yes. I found myself listening to it again and again a couple times this week when I needed to stop and breathe and feel my hand on my heart, saying, I got you, girl. Maybe listen while you prep tomatoes and cannellini.
This way to send support to Maui. My heart hurts.
Some Substack recommendations. Who are you reading here?
I’ve been diving around the Substack world today, and I feel all gooey and warm of heart. This place is brimming with smart, thoughtful, interesting people who want to show up as their vulnerable selves, readers and writers alike. The world needs as much of that as it can get. And there’s some drop-dead gorgeous writing here. Damn! Fans cheek with hand.
So many it’s hard to choose, but here’s my trio of recommendations for today:
“Singing Someone Else’s Song” on The Curious Platypus is a timely piece on all the opinions we’re inundated with. I love the ending. I just discovered this stack by
today and read one post after another. Each of them made me smile.Notes. This is a feed like on the social media platforms most of us are familiar with. A platform for readers and writers, fairly new, and rolled out by people who I’m seeing solid efforts to take on feedback, Notes has an ethos that is kind and welcoming. I like the way
summed it up. Let me paraphrase. It’s like we’re all eating gummies, and everyone loves everyone. You can be your vulnerable, goofy self, and worse-case scenario is reaction neutral.- has, indeed, seduced me. It is from Laurie that I have adopted the path of seduction, along which I hope you’ll walk with me.
So, what’ll it be?
I've been reauthenticated so now I can tell you What I Want. What I really really want. :)
Cars came first. Christine because she was possessed like a Steven King character. She kept causing accidents! Goodness, I can't remember if the next car had a name. I can almost remember her make and model. Then I moved to California and became a rock climber and a grad student A big old Dodge Ram named Lulu. She served me well, but then I became part of a team and our household did not need TWO pick up trucks that sat rarely used while my partner rode his motorcycle everywhere and I rode one of my four (or was it five?) bicycles most everywhere. Ah...Santa Barbara. Since everyone knows a Toyota Tacoma is a better long-term investment than a Dodge, it was time for Lulu to go. Fortunately she was purchased by a City College employee and I got to see her in the parking lot for years to come. The relationship ended and I had no motorized wheels! How was I supposed to get to my cyclocross races in LA that were to be my mental health/relationship excise/exercise? Cue Sassy Sally the Blue Sensation an adorable Honda Fit that was at heart a circus car, if you packed her full things would just keep coming out of the car! Two bikes and all my camping gear while living in the Rocky Mountains for four months? No problem! Then came time to liquidate everything except two bicycles. I was going to bikepack all over the world for undetermined amount of time. I sold Sally to super bad-ass biker/climber lady friend younger than myself who died of cancer not too long after. Covid had brought me back to Santa Barbara and Sally almost came home to me, but the esposa of her now tragically deceased owner had taken a liking to Sally and decided to keep her. I don't need no stinkin' car! Off to Oregon I went to work and live for a summer, car free with an uncountable miles of trails out my backdoor. Cue the first wildfire and evacuation of the season. It turns out a car is really helpful in this situation (this was the late-Covid era where car rentals were impossible to get and cost as much a good used car) so a good used car it was to be. I emergency purchased a 10 year old Subaru Outback with heated leather seats and a moon roof. This car, oh my goodness what WAS her name?, was never *my* car. I year later I sold her for what I paid. Enter Hashbrown. Oh lovely, money sucking Hashbrown, my first (and to date) only van. 1995 Ford Aerostar. They are spacious and despite the low mileage, age is the ultimate destroyer of things: valves, hoses, all things plastic disintegrating. One by one, I fix what I can and pay too much money to have other things fixed, but it always feels like stop gap measures. Never really making them whole or getting ahead. So much like life.
Ha, I'm not even going to reread that stream of consciousness above and there is no time to talk about the bikes. All the bikes! I hope to return to read the other comments! xx
My dad has always named his vehicles and I've picked up the torch. We've had Baby Blue, a cute little Mazda 3, as well as Big Blue, a cranky bit reliable 1995 Ford 150 pickup. Then along came Larry, a 2007 Ford Lariat pickup. My current car is Casper, a white Prius and my husband has a Prius named Dash. Not only is Dash larger and peppier than Casper, Dash was the headmaster of Casper's ghost school.