Yikes. I just read that article and it’s like the most extreme form of someone being obsessed with the idea of an experience but never having done any version of it. He claims to want to show his daughter the world, but there are way easier ways to do that than building this monstrosity. The places he lists that he wants to take her (California and Canada) hardly require a 52,000 lb, six-wheel drive tractor trailer. How about a plane ticket and a rental car? If you want to go off road for a day, rent a Jeep. For other places in the world, he describes them as “too dangerous” for his daughter. He describes adding the motorcycle in case his daughter has a medical emergency, which is guaranteed to be worse than calling 911 anywhere in Canada or California.
This guy has a kind of neurosis that you see sometimes with technology-obsessed people from white collar backgrounds who haven’t actually done very much in the world. I had a lot of coworkers like this guy, but without the infinite money to act on the feelings. People who want to do things, but think they need enormous layers of technology and “protection” to do it. I’ve never seen it manifested at quite this extreme before, but it’s frankly a little disturbing.
Also, any truck that complicated is going to break down in the first bit of real adversity it encounters, and he’ll be mighty glad for all the locals in whatever village in Africa he gets stuck near who have first gen Land Rovers to bring him to a hotel.
I wish guys like this would admit that this enterprise is about them and their love of gadgets for gadget’s sake. This has nothing to do with his daughter and what’s best for her.
