Fellow Travellers

A road trip in the United States is definitely not a solitary activity. We had plenty of company, and not just from the tens of thousands of Laughlin River Run refugees making their slow, sunburned way home.



It's not enough for these people to buy an American scale pickup truck or SUV, like a ute on steroids, they then have to jack it way up into the air and drag a boat behind it. I'm particularly baffled by the need for the tyres to extend out further than the body of the car. Why? Why? Why?



I will say this for the truck driving road trippers, at least some of them are good boy scouts. This guy, when stuck in a traffic jam, didn't let the heat get him down. He just reached back into the icebox and grabbed a couple of cold drinks.



He seemed friendly enough so I encouraged Dad to pull up alongside and order a couple of drinks at the window. Alas, the opportunity did not present itself. I'm sure they would have been happy to help out, if only our window had come up higher than the wheel nuts on their truck.



If I thought the "normal" trucks here were huge, I was still in for a big surprise. When the biggest non-commercial truck on the road came up behind us I thought at first that it was a real truck, despite Dad's assurances that this was, in fact, just an overgrown pickup truck - like the one beside it.



Once I saw it from behind I realised that he was right. This gigantic machine is actually someone's private vehicle. They do the shopping in this thing. They drive it to to work. They take it to the drive-in (the vehicular equivalent of an afro in a cinema).


If bigger really is better, then this must be the best car in the world, and if men buy big trucks to compensate for small anatomical features, then this guy must have a concave appendage.