A Fairbanks Fairytale

By Sarah Olson

On September 10th, the Czech (Mike), the German (Moose) and the American (myself, Sarah) drove down the ever-bumpy Chena Hot Springs Road to revisit a truck with a for sale sign that was sitting in the background of a garage sale that Philipp and I had gone to a week earlier, where we had scored a sweet cumbersome and boxy 1970’s TV that miraculously played 3 channels in exchange for five dollars, complete with an old air conditioning unit. Steal of a deal, right?! After exchanging a few texts with the owner, we had scheduled a time to take the Brick for a joyride, exuberant that the 1979 pile of yellow even started. We piled into the three-seater couch seat and took the beauty for a creeping, 10 mph stroll around the owner’s yard. We were sold instantly. After expressing our excitement and interest in the truck, we shook hands with the owner and planned on coming back the next day with cash to exchange for this timeless, priceless machine.

After getting our laughs and squeals of excitement out, we sat down to grab a bite of campus cache food (likely banana bread and a coca cola) and wrote down a contract between the three of us, stating our truck rules and breaking down the logistics of how this rig would operate. After hours of figuring it out, we had a two sided sheet of paper torn out from an old notebook that would be the future for the Brick. The following day, we took the same trip out to our new found happy place to make the deal happen. A deal it was.

The yellow truck bounced over the lumps and uneven ground of Chena Hot Springs road, which is when it earned its second name of the “Big Yellow Boat”. Mike described the first ride similar to riding in a boat over wavy water, the truck gracefully bounced back and forth to find its equilibrium while driving. It rolled up to Hot Springs Gas where it would receive its first sip of gas in years, let me tell you- the gas receipt wasn’t cheap, that tank had to have been close to dry. That was nothing to dull our spirits though.

Driving back into town, we stopped at my cabin to clean the old machine up, despite our efforts, the grease and grime had indeed been building since 1979, so after a few hours of cleaning the call was made that it would need a trip to the Splash n Dash down the road. The next day, the truck got insured and registered. This old brick was ready to rip, and oh boy it did.

We’ve had the truck for a while now, and still get giddy every time we hear the engine rumble to a start. There have been some repairs and fixes to the truck to get it in reliable condition. We can thank Mike for that, he is our mechanical genius. I don’t know how the guy does it, he just screws a few things and knocks a few others and in a blink of an eye the problem is fixed. He serves as our primary mechanic, Moose and I mainly serve as his hype team and a team of ears to listen and learn about parts of the truck and how to fix different parts within it.

Moose hadn’t even been in America for two weeks before he hopped on board with the two of us to buy the truck. Talk about being thrown into the scene real quick. I’m thankful he trusted Mike and I enough to make the once in a lifetime purchase. To Moose’s parents, if you happen to find your hands on this story… thanks for letting us have him over on this side of the pond for a while. Other than our truck not having a fuel gauge, he is in great hands.

Until next time, we’ll be living through the words of Robert Earl, “The Road Goes on Forever and the Party Never Ends.

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