Author: Tonya Mercer
I’ve been four wheeling all of my life, even before I could remember. My Grammy used to tell a story about my Dad taking us up on White Mountain, in his old Ford, not long after I was born. She swore that she held me in her arms as we bounced along the road. In high school, my Dad brought home a CJ5 as a project vehicle. I hated it. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Jeeps, It just wasn’t the vehicle for me. We never worked on it. I graduated and moved out without ever driving it. In college my boyfriend (now husband) and I would go drive out on two-tracks and go snow-bashing in the winter. He would drive and I would ride along. We spent a lot of time in the garage working on his truck together. When we left the community college and moved to go to the university, we joined a local four wheel drive club. It was through this club that I was introduced to actual trail wheeling and rock crawling.
I remember the first trail we went on; the rocks were sooo big (in retrospect, they weren’t). I was sure we would never make it through our first trip. As the months went by, and went on more, trips we learned a lot. Chris decided to build his first off road rig and quit taking the daily driver out. We made our first trip to Moab with the club. Ah, Moab. So many memories of our fist trip; tent camping along the Potash Road, the all night and next day rain storm (it took all week for our stuff to dry out), all the pictures I took of the waterfalls and creek in Pritchett Canyon (those aren’t supposed to be there?), walking five days worth of trails because I was sure we were going to die. (Oh wait! Those were photo ops… I was just taking pictures of all the amazing places we were.) But it was during that trip that I decided that I wanted to learn how to drive.
Our vehicle broke pretty bad the first day that we were there. We limped it off of the trail and some friends towed it back to camp. We tried to repair it; but in the end we ended up spending the rest of the week in other people’s vehicles. One of the couples that we were friends with, had each brought a vehicle. She wasn’t able to stay the entire week, so she let us drive her vehicle for the rest of the trip. Offie is a 1985 Toyota 4Runner, and she took us everywhere that we wanted to go. Her name is short for Offroadite (think Aphrodite). She is a trail goddess. Her engine is a 22RTE out of a 1987 Toyota pickup. She is running 5:29’s and is bobbed eight inches in the back for a better departure angle. She has been through many changes over the years, but at the time, she had a total of seven inches of lift, was on a set of 36” Super Swampers (and they were HUGE at the time)and the most important thing to me back then was that she was an automatic.
At the end of the week, we packed up to head home. There was talk of a new trail that had just opened in Grand Junction. 21Road they called it. Some of us decided to stop on the way home and try it out. Before I even knew what I was doing, I asked if I could drive. I immediately felt bad about it, after all we were going on an unknown trail, I had never driven off road before, and I didn’t even have my own vehicle. But not only did I get to drive; I got to drive the whole trail. I learned quickly to follow my spotter, and do what he said. It was awesome! It was scary, and thrilling and empowering all at the same time. I would have never imagined that I could drive such a trail. The automatic was great. I didn’t have to think about shifting or anything. I just aimed her at the rock I wanted to go over, and she went. Chris said it was like having training wheels.
Several months after the trip, our friends got a divorce. Offie went up for sale. I couldn’t let her go out of my life, so I gathered what money I could and got my first loan. She has been with me ever since. We’ve grown a lot together in the last twenty years. I’m no longer scared of big rocks (unless they are off-camber and on a cliff edge). Offie is no longer an automatic. Neither of us have the body that we used to. We have been to events together, been on vacation together, and even been in rock crawling competitions together. Not only has she been there when I was learning to drive, our son has been learning to drive with her too. I cannot begin to describe the impact that one vehicle has made on my life, but I’m quite certain that I wouldn’t be the person I am without her.
Author: Tonya Mercer
