CROSS COUNTRY IN AN AILING AMBULANCE

The first time I drove across the country, I was 18 years old. I had just graduated high school in Massachusetts, and by some twisted mixture of influences including Jack Kerouac novels, Burt Reynolds movies and too much time on social media, I had decided that I needed to head west. I saw the cross-country road trip as an American birthright, a way to break out of the suburban waste and fly into the real world on the back of a Detroit-built V-8. So, with next to zero research and $2,000 in my pocket, I set out to buy myself a van.

And boy oh boy, did I find a van. Its name was “Boat,” and it was a 1986 E-350 that had been