road trip down memory lane

PHOTO BY LIA CROWE

Last fall, my husband and I took a five-day road trip

around the West Kootenays. It was a dazzling escape: the weather was perfect, the scenery stunning, and the time away an excellent antidote to the craziness of 2020. You can read about it in this issue of Boulevard.

Usually on our road excursions we take our decade-old Toyota FJ Cruiser—a solid, safe-feeling ride that nevertheless lacks creature comforts. On this trip, we test-drove a fully loaded Volvo XC90 T8, enjoying all the gadgets, options and pass-anyone-anytime power.

I owned a Volvo wagon back in the late ‘80s, and this recent trip reminded me that, for years, that Volvo was my favourite of a long line of vehicles in my possession. So it was with great interest—just after our road trip—that I stumbled upon a newspaper column I’d written in 1989 about purchasing my Volvo wagon.

Apparently, at the time, I was less impressed by it than my companion, who was then my fiancé, and is now my ex-husband. For one thing, I had my eye on a red 1969 MG that seemed more suited to my teen-hood namesake of “Little Hell on Wheels.” I pictured myself racing around corners in it, sliding over hills and dips in the countryside and tearing down the highway with the tunes blaring and muffler blasting. And my big dog? Well, I guess, he’d stay at home. And the inevitable arrival of offspring? Their friends? The groceries? Reluctantly, I let the dream dissipate.

At the next dealership, my ex spied the Volvo wagon.

“This car sells itself,” said the salesman (which was probably true since my ex was a big Volvo fan). He popped the hood: “You could eat breakfast off this engine.” My ex was so excited, I suddenly wondered if men actually dreamed of staring at a fuel injection system while they forked down bacon and eggs. Interesting.

A test-drive was next. And this I’d forgotten: I couldn’t even testdrive the wagon because at that point, I hadn’t yet had the extremely delightful experience of being taught by my ex to drive a standard vehicle—lessons that soon afterwards occurred on a one-ton pick-up with a four-on-the-floor stick shift. (You can picture how much fun that was!)

After the test-drive, during which I pushed a few buttons on the dash and made sure the radio worked, my ex’s face was awash in enthusiasm. “So!?”

“Nice colour,” I admitted. “Leather seats, air-conditioning, rear windshield wiper.” (Big deals back then.)

I realized, with the wisdom of my mid-20s self, that a capital-F Family car was probably the inevitable choice. (And think of the breakfasts!) So I bought it and once I discovered that driving a stick shift turns any vehicle into a sports car, I fell madly in love with it. I loved the leather interior; I loved its spaciousness.

But there was one issue. We always named our cars. That one-ton truck was called The Silver Bullet; our Land Rover was named The Heap, and my current husband and I call our FJ The Beast. But back in the day, my ex gave the Volvo a joke name and it stuck. We tried and tried to call it something else, but that car became: The Vulva.

Thankfully on our Kootenays road trip, we found a better name for our shiny blue Volvo: we called it Blue Georgia in honour of the newly-turned-Democratic state in the US election, the results of which were playing out on SiriusXM as we drove the Kootenays.

There is much more than road travel in this issue of Boulevard, and we invite you to take a spin through the following pages. Enjoy!

Susan Lundy

Editor

Susan Lundy is a former journalist who now works as a magazine editor, author and freelance writer. Watch for her new book, Home on the Strange, out April 13, 2021 via Heritage House Publishing.