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Around the Bend

4 June 2022

The Big Bend “Muse-mobile” has journeyed home!

A trip to the Bay Area was necessary for us to pick up the 2022 Ford Bronco, the Big Bend edition, in the brand new color “Eruption Green.” The green is truly a gorgeous shade, more akin to British racing green, the type of paint job that I used to see on the Raleigh bicycles that belonged to college chums.


It’s been a 5-year wait for this baby to arrive, safe and sound, to the Milligan house. We started this odyssey in early 2017 with whispers of Ford bringing back The Bronco; and the experience has been one of those one-of-a-kind adventures. This edition is a second-year model, well beyond Beta version. And probably even further beyond the gripes and groans that reverberated from the Bronco 6G Forum, especially during the past summer of 2021. At that digital site, I learned that even men can become nervous nellies and whining wusses.

Despite their negatones and complaints about the world in the USA crumbling, I think this purchase is an inspired one for me, and a lucky one as well. It’s been 17 years since my last new-car purchase, the Cadillac that steered me toward writing THE DAWN. Today, I took a break from writing Chapter 10 of THE LAST WALTZ, an emotional chapter, so that I could get a bit emotional about myself! I have to say that every bump in this order-road and purchase-path to today has been handled smoothly, without too much drag on my life. If a person decides to expect the worst, he’ll probably get it. Good things, fine things, beautiful things, extra-ordinary things are worth waiting for.

My Bronco was worth every minute, month, and year, from those earliest spy-pix (that were way off-base in design), to the actual click of the customer commitment to buy it — in June 2021!


The break-in period is still underway, moving toward that 500-mile threshold. Thus far, John Bronco is a solid driving machine. He sits higher off the ground than I’d expected, and, thus, I must mount the seat, not merely climb into it. Obviously, wearing high heels and a dress will be reserved for those fancier excursions in my Caddy.

I can’t say where my first automotive wandering will be in the Bronco, but I am leaning strongly toward Lake Tahoe. Dear Hubby will do the grunt work of filling the bandit-tank. There was one fantastic perk today from the dealership in Colma, CA: A FULL gas tank — on the house! Worth its weight in gold!!

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