This summer, my mom asked me if I’d go on an off-roading trip with her in the fall. I said yes, mainly because that was the last thing I’d ever have expected my mother to suggest.
You must understand, my mom is not the off-roading type. A retired neonatologist in her sixties, she is gentle and often shy. She does jigsaw puzzles for fun; she loves writing, her dog, and collecting bear-themed trinkets. But this spring, she retired and bought a Bronco Heritage Edition:
which looks like this, if you (like me) only know the new Broncos as those massive, sweet cars that look far too expensive for a mere twenty-something.
It turns out that Broncos are not only good for looking bougie at the Whole Foods; they’re also designed for off-roading. It also turns out that Ford holds “off-roadeos” around the States—off-roading courses with the secondary goal of luring Bronco drivers into Ford culture. Bronco owners can attend one “off-roadeo” for free, and bring one guest.
So that’s how I ended up taking PTO last weekend; meeting my mom in Salt Lake City, Utah; and making the four-hour drive into Moab. (Thankfully, the “off-roadeo” includes a Bronco to drive, so Mom didn’t have to drive her car all the way from South Carolina.) We’d lived most of our lives at sea level, and we spent the whole drive gawking at the cliffs and mountains, interspersed with vast expanses of rocks and desert shrubs.
On the morning of our “off-roadeo,” my mom’s anxiety made itself known.
“What if we just didn’t show up?” she half-joked in our hotel room.
“We came all this way; we gotta do it,” I half-protested back. “Don’t worry, they wouldn’t offer this if normal people couldn’t figure it out.”
Privately, I wasn’t not nervous about off-roading. I had no idea what this “off-roadeo” would look like, but it sure sounded less fun and more psychologically taxing than hiking one of the gorgeous state or national parks around us. Plus, what if we damaged their car??
But we didn’t back out, and before I knew it, I was sitting shotgun while Mom steered us up a slope of jumbled rocks, revving over holes and treacherously placed boulders, the hood of our borrowed Bronco tilting into the sky at an angle that I normally associate with amusement park rides. Throughout the day, only the apparent calmness of our group’s instructor (who, conveniently, also worked for Moab Search and Rescue) convinced me that we weren’t in imminent danger of rolling off the hillside or otherwise destroying our car.
Eleanor Lee (‘23) graduated from Calvin with degrees in computer science and writing. She grew up in South Carolina but currently lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She loves coffee, laughing, and bringing emojis to the workplace.
