Tag Archives: jeep

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Antwerpen Chrysler Jeep Dodge. Antwerpen is apparently the outfit that bought my Jeep after the nice people at Land Rover sent it to auction. They, in turn, sold it to someone named Kok Loeng. But somehow as far as the dealership and the MVA are concerned it’s still my email and physical mail address associated with the Jeep. I regularly get letters both electronic and physical. I guess it’s only a little absurd that they can’t sort it out. I advised them once but now they’re on their own. I’d like to say I’m surprised, but it feels pretty much in character for both a car dealership and the state government.

2. Smell. I was walking the halls at the office on Tuesday and was struck by a distinct smell that I always identify with hotel rooms at the beach. I think it’s some combination of a space being overly air conditioned, high humidity, and cleaning products. If I hadn’t known better, I could have said I was walking the halls at the Carousel thirty odd years ago. It’s a damned dirty trick for your mind to play when you’re standing in the dumb office being a trusted professional. 

3. Here we are on Thursday, trying to slip back into the week after a random holiday on Wednesday. I’m not a big fan of these floating holidays. Where they fall on most other points in the calendar, I fill in the blanks with some of my own vacation time to build out a nice long weekend. Since I’ve already done that in early June and will do it again in early July, burning off more vacation time between the two feels excessive. So, what we’re left with was basically a week that feels very much like it’s had two Mondays. If that’s not the sign of a having a bad time, I don’t know what would be. 

New whip…

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After a great deal of consideration and a lot of shopping, I traded off both the Tundra and the Wrangler in favor of bringing home a shiny new Land Rover Defender. 

As a young man, it’s a one of those vehicles I saw in magazines and occasionally on television or movies and thought, if I ever make it, that’s the kind of car I want to drive. As the years passed, I made the rounds – sedans, coupes, sports cars with great growling V8s, pickup trucks, and 4×4’s. I’ve never been particularly brand loyal. At various times, I’ve owned Fords, Chevys, Pontiacs, Toyotas, and Jeeps depending on what caught my fancy at the time. But putting one of the great British overlanders in the garage was always a dream, even if it was one that felt unlikely.

Given the state of the automotive industry, with its ongoing emphasis on transitioning to hybrids or all electrics, it finally felt like the time was right. If I didn’t do it now, I might never have the chance to own a proper petrol-powered Land Rover. It was a now or never moment before the motor car transforms forever from internal combustion to whatever comes next.

So here I am, with what’s sure to be a quirky, expensive to maintain, premium fuel guzzling, British (by way of Slovakia) import.

All the forums question the reliability of these new model Defenders. I got the same warnings every time I bought another Jeep and had two remarkably reliable vehicles. Ask me in four or five years how I feel about it, but for now I absolutely adore my Pangea green, white roofed, old fashioned steel wheeled throwback.

Whatever else it is, it’s a very pretty thing that I’m dearly glad to have.

Fleet management…

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I’m trying to mentally nudge myself in the direction of accepting that I’m going to need to buy a new vehicle in the not terribly distant future. With both the Tundra and the Wrangler approaching a point where they should be let go, I’m starting to poke around the margins at what might replace them. 

And that, of course, is where it gets complicated. 

Is the right answer a 1:1 trade of old Tundra for new Tundra? The price point of doing a straight up replacement of my current truck runs me somewhere north of $65,000… and that feels like an absurd price to pay for a pickup truck. 

Maybe I should be looking to bundle my trade and let both the Jeep and the Tundra go to bring home… something. The math gets more involved when I remember that the Jeep is where all my trade in value is. A 12-year-old tundra, wrecked once, with 145,000 miles on the clock it is always going to have a limited audience even when it looks remarkably clean and has otherwise been well maintained. 

There’s the question of whether I need another truck at all. I’ve had a truck in the fleet for 15 years, but the bed stays empty aside from running the trash to the dump once a month, bringing in canned gas for the lawnmower once or twice a summer, and periodically hauling flat packed bookcases home from IKEA. It would certainly be less convenient, but is it more cost effective just to rent a truck when I really need one or plus up my budget for big item delivery?

If the right answer for the next vehicle isn’t a truck, what is right? A SUV? Something low slung? Certainly not a sedan. 

I haven’t quite convinced myself that I wouldn’t terribly miss having a truck, even if I don’t strictly need one. That said, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little attracted to having a fully enclosed vehicle… and perhaps on that had a less temperamental top… and windows that didn’t scratch if you brush against them… and maybe something that behaved with just a bit more polish on the highway.

Cutting the fleet by 50% would create obvious operations and maintenance savings – costs that are bound to increase the longer I hang on to a 12-year-old pickup and a 6-year-old Jeep. Is that cost savings enough to convince me any reasonable person can get by with just one vehicle? Hard to say.

As it is, interest rates are probably too high to consider anything seriously… but the ideas are definitely percolating. I’ll either get a wild hare and pull the trigger on something or I won’t. I honestly have no idea which way I’ll break or when it might happen.

Another chicken dream…

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I had chicken for dinner last night. As happens more often than not under these circumstances, my subconscious treated me to yet another of what I’ve fondly come to think of as “chicken dream.”

This one featured a very vivid sequence in which I was driving the Jeep along the edge of a park or maybe a town square. It was tree lined and bucolic and filled with protestors wearing red shirts. As I passed, rolling slowly, they began spilling over into the street. One of the red shirts, armed, and now standing in the middle of the street leveled a rifle (hunting, not assault). I have a stark recollection of staring down the open barrel – its bore looking like an ever-widening maw – and then instinctively popping the clutch and knocking the unknown rifleman out of the way.

Rather than fleeing as would probably have been advisable in a real-world mob scene, dream me pulled to the curb on the next block, locked the Jeep, and checked into a hotel. The next morning the protestors were gone, but so was the Jeep. The entire square looked pristine and as if no one had even the audacity to walk on the grass the day before.

I was getting decidedly surly looks from townspeople who were gathering in small groups of two or three people, whispering as I passed. After scouring the surrounding streets for the Jeep, my dream self gave up, commenting “Well, I guess I just live here now.”

And that’s where I jolted awake in the very early hours of Tuesday morning. My inner self was more than happy to go along with the crowds, running down an armed bandit, and choosing to stick around overnight for no apparent reason – but even in a dream state it couldn’t get past the idea that I’d voluntarily live in “downtown” anywhere.

I’ve said it before, but I really do need to stop having chicken for dinner. It truly makes for some of the dumbest dreams.

Who failed who?

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I’ve had a Jeep in my garage for a pretty sizable part of my adult life. The one constant in all that time is that wherever I pointed my tires, it went without complaint. Snow, mud, washed out roads, none of them ever required more than maybe shifting from high range to low.

This past Friday morning, for the first time, I pointed the Jeep’s nose in the direction of an obstacle it couldn’t surmount. Of the two ways out of the neighborhood, the one I most commonly follow involves a quick right turn directly up a short, but steep hill. This hill, on the day in question, was, at least partially, a sheet of ice. 

All other things being equal, I’d have been sorely tempted to put her in 4-low and crawl up and over this stretch of ice. Such is my confidence in the Jeep’s almost universal sure-footedness. The hill, though, had already claimed at least two vehicles in their attempt to reach the promise of flat ground and dry pavement at the top. One was tantalizingly close to the top, though stuck awkwardly sideways straddling a travel lane and the ditch. The other was stopped dead on the steepest portion of the hill, the driver seemingly unsure how to extract themself from the situation.

As sure as I’m sitting here typing, I believe the Jeep could have carried the hill – although that would have meant swinging into the oncoming traffic lane and putting her perilously close to the two earlier vehicles who’d blown their chance. The margin of error would have been measured somewhere between inches and feet. 

I decided the better part of valor was looking for an alternate route, which involved an extra twenty minutes and two more bits of backtracking before finding a path that hadn’t already claimed victims that morning.

I’ll never know for sure if the Jeep failed me or I failed the Jeep. In my overabundance of caution, it feels a lot like the latter.

Monsoon season…

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As it turns out it’s monsoon season here in the mid-Atlantic. Something something climate change, something something global warming, something something fake news. I’m sure there are a wide ranging set of reasons this summer as gone directly from cold and rainy to oven baked, and is now shifting gears back to torrential downpours. I find none of those reasons particularly interesting. Mostly because none of them lead to a long stretch of days that we could reasonably describe as “temperate.” I think at this point I may even be willing to settle for “seasonal.”

We’re two months through “summer,” and I’ve only had the top off a handful of times – worse yet, the doors have been firmly installed since I put them back on last September. That’s no kind of life for a Jeep. I mean if you’re not going to drive it up to the fender wells in mud, the very least you can do is strip it down to the bare essentials and enjoy the open air. Except, sadly, you need the air to also cooperate with this plan.

We’ll see what August brings, but given recent history I’m not overly optimistic. I have a terrible feeling that the last, best hope for good Jeep weather this year will be in finding a long Indian summer and trying to hold on to it a little too long. This late in topless driving / monsoon season I suppose I’ll have to take what I can get.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Overestimation. As much as I appreciate your belief that a good word from me is a powerful totem for overcoming organizational obstacles, I regretfully must inform you that you have profoundly overestimated my ability to command change in a chaotic world. I appreciate your vote of confidence, but if my serving as the voice of reason is your last best hope, I think it’s best for all of us if you plan now on crushing disappointment. Rest assured that my pleas fall on the same deaf ears as yours.

2. New (old) routine. It took me exactly three days to fall into a new routine of doing whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it. Landing back in the office after almost a week of that kind of decadent behavior has proven to be a hard pill to swallow. Sure, it’s just the old routine back again, but after a brief hint of freedom I can’t help but resent the confining structure just a little bit more than usual. Fortunately it will only take a few weeks of grinding monotony to reset my expectations based on this new (old) routine.

3. Pollen. The weather these last two days has been ideal for top down driving. The airborne pollen that hits you like a physical wall, however, makes it prohibitively agonizing to avail myself of the opportunity. Sure, some people who are more strongly constituted or may just be willing to endure scratchy, bloodshot eyes and the inability to breath through their nose, are out there soaking up the sun. Me? Not so much. Real summer will be here soon-ish. Then I can really enjoy the ride. Sadly, though, I want to be topless now.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Rain. Not all rain is bad or evil. We need it and in some quantity recently. If it could hold off a bit on pouring it down during the mid-morning through late afternoon parts of the day, though, I would really appreciate it. As much as I still enjoy driving my big red Tundra, I’d really like to continue Jeeping topless during the only time of year when it’s really comfortable to do so. Yes, I know the drain plugs will take care of whatever standing water may be on the floorboards, but that’s an extreme measure I’d just rather not need to resort to unless it can’t be avoided.

2. Q&A. Live, unscripted question and answer periods with “the general public” should never be encouraged. For every reasonably well thought out question that’s asked, three more that are either completely off topic, so specific as to bore the other 300 people in the room to absolute tears, or utterly nonsensical and not formulated in any kind of structure known to the actual English language. In an open forum it’s just not worth the risk. The potential damage due to the extreme rolling of audience members’ eyes is a real and present threat.

3. Trusted professionals. Today, I’m left with a thought from John Wayne in his last role. He said, “I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted. I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.” Now I may have missed the circus this morning, but let the word ring forth from this time and this place, that if any of you trusted professionals decides to to put your hands on me, you’d best have made up your mind that I’m the last thing you want to touch for a good long time because by all the gods, I will break every bone in your worthless hand.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. ​Not hungry. It’s a rare accomplishment but I’ve slid through the last two days being so annoyed that I’m not even hungry. Bowl of cereal for dinner. A cookie and a giant iced tea for lunch. Copious amounts of coffee at all other points on the clock. I’m assuming that’s not one of those healthy diets people keep posting on Facebook but it is what it is.

2. Unity of command. It’s another one of those exciting weeks where I’m not entirely sure which of six people I actually work for. I know who signs my time sheet and who approves my leave requests, those being the most important functions of supervision. Identifying who exactly is supposed to assign and prioritize my work, though, remains a vague bit of prognosticating. If only we had an organizational chart that spelled out clearly who does what to whom.

3. The challenge of being topless. When you climb onto a Jeep with its top and doors removed you leave yourself open to whatever elements come. You also leave yourself exposed to the other people on the road. Cigarettes flicked out of the window of the car in front of you suddenly have a much more present danger than they did when you were buckled up in a sealed, climate controlled machine. It’s also important that the people near you can actually both see every gesture you make and hear whatever it is you’re saying (or singing along with). That’s a helpful bit to remember if you’re prone to criticizing the skills of your fellow motorists in colorful terms… although the guy stopped next to me on the bridge yesterday seemed to particularly enjoy my repeated pleas for the police to just push the mangled vehicles over the side, let the asshats responsible figure out how to fish them out of the Susquehanna, and get traffic moving again.

Doors are overrated…

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In a world where automobile manufacturers chase ever more stringent fleet fuel standards and where soccer moms traded the Suburban for the latest “crossover SUV” (i.e. station wagon), I find very little to get excited over in the average production vehicle. There are a few exceptions and most of them don’t start looking particularly interesting until they are approaching the six-figure price point. Across most product lines, one sedan or coupe is pretty much only a few pieces of molding different from the next.

I’ve long suspected that sameness elsewhere is what brings me back around to the Jeep when it’s time to find a new vehicle. Sure, the edges have been softened. There’s a lot of plastic cowling where there used to be just tube steel. It’s got power locks and windows and a staggering amount of electronic toys in the dash. At its heart though, Chrysler has resisted the siren’s song of making the Jeep into just another crossover with a nameplate that use to mean something. Thank God for that.

One of the great joys of a Jeep is that you really can strip it down to the essentials – and engine, four wheels, and someplace to sit. In fact, once you’ve pulled the top away and unbolted the doors, you’re not so much getting into your Jeep as you are riding on top of it. All the while, everything rattles, you notice an unaccounted for whistle of wind crossing some newly exposed surface, every pothole rattles up your spine. You’ll slip out from behind the wheel knowing, feeling, that you were driving the machine instead of just being a passenger who occasionally made minor course corrections.

Man, stripped down and jamming through the gears, it’s a thing of real beauty… and only adds to my firm belief that doors are largely overrated (when the weather is good and you’ve got reasonably secure parking).