December | 2020 | The Dodge Kid

“I have a friend in Denver…” yes I do.

As a Vanishing Point movie fan and more than likely anyone who has had a long term interest in the old Dodge Challengers, that one phrase should take your adventuring mind soaring through the expanse of the American West, across the long and often lonely highways extending into the majestic horizons.

I live in California.

California, once imagined a land of free and easy people, thanks to a generation of flower children, hippies, and surfers, but prophetically enough, even in 1971 when the movie was produced, California is the emotionless machine run by mean faced clipped haired nazis enforcing the law that ultimately brings the story to its abrupt end, by means of that fatal road block. That marked the physical end of “Soul Mobile”, the “Last American Hero” the last “Beautiful Free Soul Spirit” so dubbed by Super Soul himself.

But the Spirit lives on.

Okay, I have a friend in Denver and I live in California, near “Frisco” as Kowalski puts it.

My roof needs be repaired and one of the only people I know who can replace the roof is my friend who lives in Denver.

The plot is forming…

The question is, will I ever take my 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T to Denver to be repaired so I can then drive back from Denver to San Francisco and retrace the path of Kowalski on his last drive?

That is, without the abrupt halt in “Cisco”.

Time and money allowing, I’d like to get a few more things done to the car before I make such an epic journey, like repaint the car all alpine white (no blackouts on the white), replace the interior back to stock specs (more or less), fix the super soul radio and tune the engine to perfection.

Sounds like a plan.