Meet Cricket

To be sure she’s no rig like Rocinante or Ghost Dancing*. I can’t close the doors against the rain and crawl in the back to sleep, nor do I have a store of applejack laid in to offer an acquaintance on the road some coffee “with authority.” But she’s a good companion, comfortable and reliable enough to see me through.

I picked up Cricket used from a dealership in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn at the foot of the Verrazano Bridge. She’s a 2000 Civic, two-door, black and compact. She came with a viper alarm system, which chirps, as do the tires when I reach for a small window in traffic. It was this chirping, and her verve, that earned her the name Cricket.

Cricket and I have traveled over 130,000 miles in the past six years. There’s a dent on the hood that’s rusting around the edges from when a deer rolled up on the front end and catapulted over the sunroof. Though I’ve replaced the entire exhaust system in pieces along the way, it still rattles. But with the roof rack off (it is), the windows up (not regularly), and going 65 miles per hour (when it suits me) she can better 40 miles a gallon.

Most of my gear fits in the trunk: a one-person tent, therm-a-rest and sleeping bag; a backpack of clothes. The kitchen consists of a backpacking stove, a can of white gas and the remnants of my pantry. Like Steinbeck, I “laid in 150 pounds of those books one hasn’t got around to reading.” Ok, my library weighs in at a mere 38 pounds but I’m chided by the rest of his sentence: “and of course those are the books one isn’t ever going to get around to reading.”

As this is the season of international sports, I have one final caveat to add: if you’re wondering, those men in white who wield flat bats and play the game for hours or days on end are “cricketers” not cricketers.

For now, Cricket lies packed and ready and I, at the wheel, shall be the Cricketeer.

*Rocinante is the built-to-spec truck for John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie. Ghost Dancing is William Least Heat Moon’s home for his travels in Blue Highways. If you haven’t, read both, but beware, they may infect you with the “virus of restlessness” as Steinbeck calls it.