Road trips

Thursday

Bill McMorris

Road-tripping with Wittgenstein

North Carolina The ancients used the sun and moon to measure time, but modern man has a more exact instrument at his disposal: the odometer. It has ticked up a thousand-plus miles, a sure sign the 2024 holiday season has just ended. The children are all struggling in the backseat — against one another, their own bladders and the nylon straps the Car Seat Cartel has foisted upon them — and are thus unable to see the dash’s mileage ticker, as well as the incriminating orange “service reminder” messages your wife is pretending to ignore. When you read aloud the “Welcome to North Carolina” sign, your most intelligent child says, “Are we still in the United States?

Wittgenstein

Friday

Zack Christenson

Cruiser control

I’d been looking for well over a year for what I consider to be the most perfect Japanese-made piece of Americana there is. Scouring the internet on any given day turns up maybe 15 or so available, most in various states of disrepair. It’s the object of desire for most any red-blooded millennial male that salivates over things like dive watches and waxed-canvas jackets. The Toyota Land Cruiser FJ60. When the COVID pandemic hit, the used-car market exploded as city-dwellers looked for ways to escape a dreary existence in 500-square-foot apartments. What do you do when you can’t be inside? Load the family into the cruiser and head west, of course. National parks saw record-setting numbers of visitors.

cruiser