DESERT REBE

“IN THE DUNES IT WAS LIKE WE BROUGHT A KNIFE TO A BAZOOKA FIGHT, BUT THE ROXOR IS A ROCK. LIKE A LITTLE TRACTOR, IT DID EVERYTHING WE ASKED”

IT WAS WELL past dark, and our headlights were punching holes through the black void ahead. For the past 10 hours we’d been bouncing over rocky tracks, diving bumper-first into powdery silt beds, and twisting our way through precipitous arroyos. My duties as navigator were to keep an eye on the road book and GPS, and watch for hazards on the track. General grunt work you might say.

That afternoon we’d lost time when we stopped to pull our friend Larry’s AMC Rambler out of a sand wash, and with a cut-off time of 10pm we were now in a race against the clock. I calculated our position and called out to Ned Bacon, my pilot, “We’ve got to average