Battling Cancer changes your perspective on life, especially personal priorities. As a recent Cancer Survivor, I’m pursuing one of those adjusted priorities: upgrading the Tacoma we use for camping to something bigger and better. The result, still under construction, is an expedition vehicle/camper attached to a U.S. Army LMTV body. It’s kinda crazy.
Why?
Late 2014 I discovered I had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Thankfully it was caught early (stage IIB) and after enduring eight months of chemo and radiation, I’m now a Cancer Survivor. But this post isn’t about my battle with cancer. Maybe I’ll do that later. This post is about some changes to the bucket list.
My bucket list isn’t super long. I’ve lived a good, full life with a lovely (and tolerant) spouse and wonderful family. But one thing missing was scratching the itch of adventurous travel and exploration in something better than my old (but trusty) Toyota Tacoma. I fantasized of a machine capable of going off-pavement without vibrating to bits but offering a level of comfort above a tent.
Well…
Readers who have either fulfilled this dream or have similar fantasies know that there’s a lot of choices. It’s a personal decision based on needs (real or perceived) and budget (real).
Long chemo sessions presented plenty of time to research and to dream. I imagined many different iterations but one thing led to another and ended up with something like this:
In fact, it’ll be something a lot like that as we’ll be attaching a similar 15 foot unit to the ‘Merican version of the Steyr, the LMTV M1078A1.
A sleeping beauty soon to be awakened…
When
The Bliss Mobil unit is nearing completion and almost ready to ship to the U.S. The LMTV work is in progress. Our target is to have the full vehicle delivered by year end (2016). Then the project enters phase 2…
Who
Before wrapping up this post, here’s a quick shout out to the fine folks at Bliss Mobil in Breda, Netherlands and Jay Couch of Couch Off-Road Engineering in Denver, Colorado. An awesome team helping to fulfill our dreams!
That’s it for now…stay tuned.
Congratulations both on your new truck on and kicking cancers ass! We ended up doing our expedition rig on an LMTV M1083 and have been pleased to call it home for a few months now. The turning radius alone on these will make you so thankful you didn’t go with a different chassis. We have yet to tap into its capabilities but are thankful we went with the LMTV. Hope you enjoy yours!
That’s awesome! The M1083 is a great platform. The jury is still out on whether we can accommodate the weight on our M1078. We’ll see. One advantage of the Bliss Mobil setup we went with is that we can relatively easily switch out the truck if we have to. I’ll subscribed to your blog and may have some questions for you as we progress.