Vessel

Recently I have been told (by more than one person) that it is a shame I haven't named my car. Apparently, regardless of road trip, I need to name my car. Since I have had it for a year and a half without a name, I guess now is as good a time as any. Since it is going to be a pretty important fixture in my life for the next two months, it will be my friend. Someone (something) I seek solace in when I am bored and feel the urge to start discussing important topics with, like the weather. Something I seek refuge in when I am stuck in a blizzard or can’t make it to my next warm couch.

Instead of working on something that I needed to do for this trip, like say; packing, or laundry for instance, I spent an hour looking on “Best-of-Craigslist” while simultaneously tossing some names and best-of’s back and forth with my friend Desi. Just as a side note, you will be hearing a lot about her, she is my international secret keeper, writing inspiration guru and BB4L (ironically, I can’t explain this to people who don’t understand). We like to have our “chatting” time pretty much every day and we recently both decided to take adventures at the same time. She has been living in Ibiza for the last 2.5 years and will be in NYC for a few months while I travel the vast expanses of the country. I plan to get in a lot of quality time with her after my trip. I also plan on helping her land the “Best Job Ever” because I want her to be where I can call her.

So, we were tossing around ideas of car names and a few sounded good, but were some earthy hippy names. I have decided that “it” is a she. I will henceforth be referring to my car as “she” or “her” regularly. Because I drive a Subaru Wagon, I have been teased in the past about my choices in vehicles being lesbian cars, but that I have graduated to a professional, grown-up lesbian car. I am not a lesbian, nor do I condone the sort of stereotyping about ones sexual preference or choice in car. I don’t really think there is a direct correlation.

We also decided that you will need a good description of her, so that I can refer to things that have broken along the way, fallen off and are now since lost to the road, or so I can explain to you why she is starting to get a certain odor due to my lack of bathing and laundering. She is white and tan, has a few skylights for night-time stargazing. She has tan leather seats; that have seen a little wear and tear from me throwing skis and bikes in her trunk. She’s pretty high tech, thankfully she graces me with a CD player and pretty good speakers. She is also big enough in the back that I can put the backseats down and fully lay down comfortably. Before I got her, I had the pleasure of camping in the back of her cousin once at the base lodge parking area at Mt. Hood in Oregon with my friend Mike. It was only bad because it was 4° and we had to listen to the sound of snowplows almost driving into the car throughout the night. I will give you more detail of this story some other day; it is one that shouldn’t be forgotten and is actually one of the reasons I decided to buy her.

These were all important factors in deciding the logistics of her name. I had been retelling a story from a family trip to Arizona when I was in high school over the weekend and I started to think about it a lot while driving back to Boston. I was remembering how obsessed I was with Fleetwood Mac’s “The Dance” album. I’m pretty sure I listened to it non-stop for about 3 weeks and I think that I wore through the first layer of plastic on the CD.

As I was driving along Route 2 scanning through stations when Rheannon came on the. Instantly, and probably mostly to keep myself awake, I started to belt out the tune. I was pretty attached to that song during that trip, and since we were in a rental mini van, I didn't really name that car either. I can confidently say that that track on the disc still skips from overuse. I decided then, while holding an imaginary microphone to my mouth, that Rheannon was a very appropriate name for my little while Subee.