El Toro

EL TORO

I drive very quickly — when the roads are clear & empty, and fairly slowly when they aren’t. On local roads I commonly drive exactly the speed limit. This appears to annoy people a little: they may desire to run over neighborhood kids at 40 mph. But given ‘El Toro’ is one of the biggest non-truck vehicles in existence, they can gripe at it all they want as it enforces local traffic laws.

On freeways, in the middle of the night, the situation is different. It is possible to save hours each week based on how fast you chose to drive when hundreds of miles are involved in each trip. Because I can’t use a phone or fly on planes, I commonly need to drive to destination as far as 900 miles away (Seattle, San Diego, Salt Lake City, etc.) although most trips are a third of that. I am also very timeboxed due to the dialysis appointments, which are only 40 hours apart. Saving 10 hours on 1200 miles of travel is critical to being functional let alone effective.

This is not a new vampiric trait though. I crossed from Philadelphia to Los Angeles in 30-some hours when I was 18. That is about 3000 miles depending on the route you take. Back then I thought my time was very valuable, but now I know it is.

‘El toro’ is my bat-mobile — I guess it should be named ‘el murciélago’, but I acquired it before the transformation. The name is from the grunting noise it makes when the air suspension releases.

It is a fantastic vehicle: I can transport 6 people or 10-foot 2x4s completely inside. And 12-foot pipes in jousting mode out the shotgun window. And I commonly carry a pretty large (almost 3 x 4 x 3 feet) dog/animal crate, to aid in pet retrieval.

The cage is for my dog “Rorschach”. While in the hospital, my wife offered me the incentive of getting a dog when I got better. The idea was that it would motivate me to walk Rorschach, which would help my physical recovery. And mentally, I would have to take care

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of Rorschach despite how badly I felt. The show “After Life” has that second type of dynamic: a dog’s existence keeps the main character alive.

So I decided to get a Belgian shepherd from a particular breeder, named it Rorschach, figured out a vet and trainer, and acquired a cage for its initial home. And then I died, so only the cage remains of that idea.

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