I met friends recently for lunch after a hike. I sat down at the table, I said out of the blue, with a surprising amount of enthusiasm (surprising to me), “Guys, I really love my car.”
I have not always loved my car. We’ve been together for fifteen-plus years. Sometimes I feel obligated to drive her because I’ve always driven her, or so it seems.
A couple years ago, I spent time with Yvon Chouinard, a hero of mine, for a profile about the Patagonia founder declaring war on Trump’s White House. We were in Ventura, California. He asked how’d I gotten there. I said I drove. He asked what I was driving. I said a Honda Accord, I’d had it for years, the plan was to drive her into the ground—and for all of that, Chouinard’s gnomish face lit up, he said he was driving an old Honda Element, he told me I had to keep my car forever, “it’s the only responsible thing to do.”
Responsible, but is it fun, is it gorge? A 2007 Honda Accord is not flash. She is well worn, though she doesn’t show it. She once rebuffed a large nail being hammered through her cheek.
We bought her with part of the advance for my France book. She had about 15,000 miles on the odometer at the time. (We’re now a bit under 150,000.) We nicknamed her “Jet Car” because the engine’s a V6—and she still leaps off the line if I floor it. But let’s be clear, Jet Car is one of the world’s more homogenous, least interesting cars to drive.
I’ve been frustrated at times, desirous of others—still, there’s beauty without the show. In Los Angeles, I love how we disappear, invisible between supercars. The handling is nimble, speakers loud. So many memories wallpaper the interior, of long drives, highways swallowed by speed.
Maybe it’s that there’s something about the extremely familiar that recaptures serenity—is that it? Makes a new morning an improvement on the last. Moving comfortably between future and past, on open road—it can be soothing, especially when other things are in flux.
I love cars and driving, and I’ll be honest, Jet Car is among the last vehicles I’d pick. Especially in Greater L.A., car country, where a car is both second home—or, for some people, first and only home—and credential. (An old joke: anytime you see a person driving a dusty Porsche around Los Angeles, its year of manufacture is likely the moment they hit it big.) A couple months ago, we bought my wife a new car, and she loves it; and now my eye roams as to what I’ll drive next. Maybe a first- or second-generation Toyota Tacoma. A fourth-generation 3-series BMW. A ‘90s-era Jaguar XJ-S remains the far-off dream. And still, I returned from West Africa this week and couldn’t remember where I parked Jet Car, I roamed the neighborhood and started to worry if she’d been stolen—and as soon as I did, a small part of me felt relieved, guess I’ll finally get another car, though a much bigger part of me was guilty and admonished myself.
In the past month or so, I’ve started driving Jet Car much faster. We both enjoy it. I’m safe, I’m not swerving all over—but we’re having fun. And for what it’s worth, a couple months ago, I was in Ventura, at Patagonia, to have lunch with friends who work at the company, and one of them, remembering my sessions with Chouinard, asked if I was still driving that Honda? I nodded to it in the lot. He semi-stood and smiled. “Oh man,” he said, “you gotta keep her going. That’s the best.”
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In tomorrow’s supplement, three-plus ideas of things to love:
New music for different tastes
The Kindle replacement I didn't see coming
A new movie I enjoyed on Netflix, and more
What the what
Meditations in an Emergency is a weekly mini-essay from writer Rosecrans Baldwin about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with 3+ things to love, plus a monthly dispatch from the road, for some inbox wanderlust ⛰️
Rosecrans is the author of Everything Now, winner of the California Book Award. His most recent novel, The Last Kid Left, was one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year. Titles mentioned in this newsletter are stored on a Bookshop list, which pays a commission for books sold.