LenEdgerly.com

Tonight we are surrounded by beautiful, big, brand-new trucks at Whited Ford in Bangor. The Southwind is due for service tomorrow afternoon, and it may take another day if there is a part to order. Meanwhile, we are dry camping in the lot, nice and level thanks to Kevin's skillful disengagement of his 40-foot tow truck, so our front wheels are resting on three layers of yellow plastic leveling blocks. My patience is remarkably better when I am on the level, especially after two nights of a pretty good slant to starboard in Jackman.

I sat up front with Kevin in the T&W Garage tow truck, and Darlene and Claire bounced their way from Jackman to Bangor, a three-hour ride, on the mattress in the back of the cab. Kevin's skill with the truck amazed me. Route 2 from Skowhegan, which had seemed like a dangerous, narrow cowpath to me when I was driving the Southwind on it Friday and Saturday, turned into a calm, royal road for Kevin's tow truck and the trailing RV. I dozed off for a while, enjoying the lurch and lug of the vehicle, and all those gears, which Kevin played like a violin.

I'm not sure where we are going next, or when. Probably tomorrow night we'll opt for a rental car and a hotel room, if it's going to be another day before we're on the road again. But I don't mind a night surrounded by all these big trucks. They are red and blue and big and handsome. It makes sense to me that Tonka sold us boys all those replicas, and that we fell in love with them. Today I admire guys like Kevin who know how to roll the real ones down the highway as if they were still just enchanting toys.

Monday, September 18, 2006