Scouting History

Here’s a recently unearthed shot of Chewbacca on the beach in Nag’s Head in about 1999 or so. My friend James is flying my kite over on the right side. In retrospect I’m amazed at how naive and trusting I was to drive 300+ miles in a truck I’d only recently bought, but I’d already taken her across the Eastern Shore to Assateague (150 miles) with no problems. She ran like a top, and it was loads of fun to shift into 4-Lo and get her out on the beach. I think we probably drove 3-4 miles over the sand until we found a section we liked.

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Historical Documents

I’ve embarked on a project to digitize all of of my old paper files after I found out that the big multifunction copiers at work are back online and are able to email again. They have batch scanners that will take a giant stack of papers and smash them into one PDF that I can then email myself. Going through my overstuffed file cabinet I found a long-lost folder of Scout documents. It’s all Chewbacca era stuff, including the original lineset ticket, most of the receipts for the registration, an April 1972 copy of Mechanix Illustrated with a review of the new Scout II, and a bunch of other assorted papers. I was happy to find pictures that I thought I’d lost as well as correspondence from the original owner I bought it from in 1997. I’ll start posting them here as I process all the files.

This is the original listing for Chewbacca from a nice man up in Lancaster, PA. I bought this truck the day before my birthday in 1998.

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Right In The Feels

This old girl showed up on Barnfinds.com today and it hit me right in all the sensitive spots. This rig is an exact copy of Chewbacca back in the day, except for the Diesel badges on the fenders and the license plate arrangement on the tailgate. Like this truck Chewbacca was a 1978 painted Siam Yellow with no exterior trim, had all four stock hubcaps, a color-matched traveltop with no roof rack, and inside was the same Tanbark high-back bucket seats, rubber floor mats, green accents, and 4-speed stick. Chewbacca had regular side mirrors and BFG Mud-Terrains. The example for sale has some serious rust in the rockers and quarter panels, some road rash and there’s a Nissan diesel under the hood, but if I squint just a little bit I can see ol’ Chewbacca parked out in front of my house waiting for another trip to the beach.

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I See What You Did There

This nice-looking Traveler showed up on Craigslist and FB Marketplace for around $17K, which is a pretty good price for what they’re offering. What caught my eye, beyond the obvious good looks and desirable extra 18″ of wheelbase (and thus cargo space) was the location of the first staging shot:

That’s the former location of East Coast Scouts, my local IH mechanic in the early days when I had Chewbacca. He closed up shop in the early 2000’s when it got to be too much to stay on top of; he’s back in the area after moving to PA for a while and I traded emails with him last year.

East Coast Scouts, 2002

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Throwback Video

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One day in 2000 when I was at work, one of the local news teams came to my leafy, paved street (the only one in our neighborhood), blocked off traffic, and shot a promo in front of my house. The blurry shape in the upper left corner is Chewbacca, who had her 15 seconds of fame throughout Baltimore. Parked in front of her is my neighbor Bertha’s 1973 Dodge Dart. Mixed among the crowd are my neighbors and some paid stand-ins. This blurry 251x189px video is a video capture I took of a VHS recording from TV; the VHS tape is long gone and I doubt I’d ever be able to find a copy online anywhere.

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Blast from the Past.

I was poking around on our backup server last night looking for some pictures and came across some old shots of Chewbacca in and around the blizzard of ’03. This was one of her shining moments and paradoxically the final nail in her coffin; After digging out there wasn’t anyplace we couldn’t go in 4-wheel drive, but I don’t think she was ever right after bathing in road salt that year.

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