For quite a long while, my buddy Bill had a small camping trailer behind his Shingletown cabin high up the slopes of Mount Lassen, Northern California. He was an avid fly fisherman and used it on many river trips to hurt fish lips. Although I visited his cabin often and frequently heard him and his friends fondly discuss "The Puck", I never really paid any attention. Any requests to borrow it from even his closest friends was met with frowns and frequently refusal.
 In the Fall of 1998, my friend surprised me by offering to sell his vintage 1971 Puck. Bill had recently married a woman whose idea of roughing it was staying at Holiday Inn, and he knew that Sarah and I had recently acquired a loaded, low mileage 1987 Jeep Wagoneer with a good hitch. He decided to let it go knowing we would haul it everywhere and especially use it annually at Burning Man. At the time we lived in an apartment in San Francisco, and the idea of storing a car, a Wagoneer and a trailer was mind-boggling. Just the same, I went to Shingletown to check it out and immediately knew it was special. We agreed on a price ($1700) and Bill allowed me to park it behind his cabin until I worked out better arrangements. It was early December, so Sarah and I decided to take a long Xmas holiday exploring the Southwest.
The Puck had seen very little use for several years and was parked under a snow shed. Fortunately, the cabinetry and upholstery were in good shape, but water had leaked through window seams and a crack in the roof to damaged the flooring. The first step inside the door had rotted and had almost no support. The sink p-trap leaked, the water pump didn't work, and the electric system was shorted. All of these would require immediate attention if we were to live in the Puck for 2 weeks. Working in the cold, crawling under to chisel out and replace the rotten floorboards and scrubbing away the stains and mildew had me making a much larger investment than I had intended, but after a few weekends it was ready for the trip. So began our Puck adventures... |
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