Delivery was at 6:47 a.m. — early enough that the sun was still a rumor over the ridge and late enough that the parking lot was already warm. The R1S was parked at the far end, matte forest green against grey concrete, looking less like a car and more like a proposition.
You don't drive a truck like this. You settle into it. The seats are wide and the wheel is deep and the whole cabin smells faintly of leather and the tape that holds the temporary registration to the windshield. We plugged in our destination — Moab, notionally — and pulled onto the highway.
Somewhere around Barstow the pavement gave up and we did too. We aired down at a Chevron, watched the tires round out onto the sand, and pointed the truck at the mountains. The tri-motor pulled through the wash like it was insulted by gravity.
By afternoon we were on a fire road no map had bothered with, and by evening we were parked at the edge of a canyon so deep it made the truck look modest. We ate sandwiches on the tailgate and watched the light do what the light does out here, which is nothing dramatic — just slowly turn the color of the sandstone until you can't tell where the ground ends and the sky starts.
The truck drove back the way it came, uneventfully, which is the highest compliment we can pay it.
