Toyota 4Runner

This is being written from the cabin of Georgia and Pat, quite the lovely place to stay. I’ve said that out loud a dozen times already, and now it’s earned a spot on paper.

To put it simply, there is charm in every corner of this waterless home. Heart tinsel. 3D maps. Dainty little candles. A fridge door full of anecdotes. You can nearly hear Georgia’s laugh bouncing through the walls even when she’s not in the room.

Hazel and I arrived here at 3am on May 2nd, flying in from Denver, with a quick layover in Seattle.

Before leaving Colorado, Hazel had been talking to her dad’s boss, Matt, who generously offered us a vehicle to use while we were in Fairbanks. The plan was simple: he’d leave a blue Toyota truck with a bashed-in front bumper in the airport parking lot. We’d find it, grab it, and be on our way.

Easy.

Except when we landed, we hadn’t heard anything from Matt.

Uh oh.

The truck had to be somewhere. Surely.

So, with bodies weighed down by gear and the fog of 3am, we began walking the parking lot. Row by row. We looked at every large blue Toyota, checking for a bashed bumper (which, is approximately, nearly every one) and trying the doors.

Locked.
Locked.
Locked.

We were on the verge of defeat when, like a beacon under fluorescent airport lighting, there it was.

A blue Toyota 4Runner. Bashed-in front. Unlocked.

Our holy angel.

We opened the doors. Trash spilled out. The inside was rather lived in. The paperwork didn’t match the name of who we were borrowing the vehicle from, but in our defense, everything else lined up a little too perfectly.

Blue? Check.
Bashed front? Check.
Unlocked in a place where someone might leave it for pickup? Check.

There was one final test: the parking fee.

If it had just been parked there recently, it had to be ours. I stayed with the bags while Hazel drove it to the booth.

$15.

Less than a day. Boom. Confirmation. This was our truck.

We drove home, mission accomplished, and quickly collapsed into sleep.

The next morning, we told Georgia and Pat the whole story, giggling our late-night airport scavenger hunt. Everything felt settled. Easy. We had our vehicle for the week.

Georgia stepped outside for a moment to pee, then came back in.

“Guys,” she said, “that truck is green. And that is a 4Runner, not a truck.”

Our eyes turned nearly the size of quarters.

We called Matt.

“Hey… we grabbed the Toyota from the airport last night. Just wanted to confirm we got the right one.”

Pause.

“You did not.”

Another pause.

“No. You did NOT.”

“Oh… yes we did,” we said, panic creeping in through laughter.

Turns out, Matt thought we were landing a day later. He never left a truck at the airport.

You have probably translated it by now, if not, this means we had stolen a stranger’s 4Runner from the airport parking lot. Oopsies!

We rushed to Matt’s place, grabbed the actual vehicle (blue, yes, and an actual truck, not 4Runner), and drove straight back to the airport.

We parked the stolen one five spots away from where we found it, it was the closest spot available. They might question their sanity when they come back to a moved seat and a different parking spot. We are unsure if we returned the 4Runner before they noticed, or if we beat the police chase back to the airport. That is a question we will likely not find the answer to. Turns out it is very easy to steal a vehicle and get away with it. The $15 parking fee was 1/3 the price of a taxi as well. We got out on the up.

Since then, the excitement and crime has dwindled. We surprised some friends for their graduations, attended parties and rode bikes in the 11pm dusk. This sounds romanticized. There has also been mega prep going down.

In the past 2 days, at least 10 hours and a trifold of dollars have been spent in stores. From Costco to Home Depot to o’reilleys. We have our food and have calculated the grams of fuel, both white gas and isobutane that will be needed for a sufficient amount of boils on the mountain.

We will get a ride with hazels dad to talkeetna on Friday and are scheduled to fly out to Kahiltna Glacier, where base camp is located, on Saturday. Snotty weather is looking likely to delay us. I wouldn’t be mad with one or two more nights of guaranteed warmth in a cute town. But, we’ve got to start sometime and will be ready for whatever that day is. For now, I anticipate that day with equal parts excitement and nerve.