Hobo wheels

We won't actually be riding the rails during our adventure, and hopefully we won't be riding in Zach's 2002 Chevy Malibu, either. He got the car shortly after we started dating and we've taken it all over - it even hauled us out to Utah for our first real backpacking/road trip together. I don't have any pictures of it except for this one from our journey to Utah, which also nicely displays Zach's natural bad-ass side (the looong hair is sadly gone, but the white pine tattoo, aviators and bandana remain):



This Malibu is essentially our household car because I don't have one. I bike, bus, and drive his car alone pretty rarely. It terrifies me. 1) I'm a terrible driver since I've been carless since high school, 2) it sucks on the snow, and 3) it has a very unsettling rattle to it. My dad, an automotive genius, said every time he starts it he's pretty sure things are going to come flying out of the engine. Aside from that, it's a terrible fit for our lifestyle. We've taken it on plenty of trips, but frequently we have to borrow my mother-in-law's Jeep when we need to haul a canoe or drive through mountains in winter.

We've been talking about trading it out for something a little more useful. This weekend, when we were up north at a friend's cabin, the severe subzero temps really gave the Malibu a rough time. It took almost 2 hours of man-time to get it running, so we made an executive decision that we should start seriously shopping.

We'll be buying used because it's just what we and our parents always do. Buy used, drive into the ground, repeat. And, like many granola types before us, we're looking mostly at Subaru models. We can throw a canoe on, trudge through snowy mountains, and get decent gas mileage (for our budget). Then we'll slap a Pert Near Sandstone sticker on it and solidify our position as urban hippies.