We Sold It As An Idea
Sofia is gone. What she gave us isn't.
By the time you read this, Sofia will be gone.
Somewhere on I-84, a couple from Wisconsin will be hauling her east toward a life they’ve been dreaming about. I know that feeling. I’ve lived inside it. And honestly, that’s the only reason handing her over doesn’t completely break me.
We didn’t list her as a trailer. We listed her as an idea. Bob and Val read it and drove across the country for it. That tells me everything I need to know about them. I hope she gives them back something they didn’t know they’d lost. That’s what she did for us.
Some things are ending all at once, and Sofia is the easiest one to name.
She earned her name on the drive back from Texas.
We’d just picked her up from the Casita factory in Rice, and somewhere on that long stretch of highway home, she became Sofia. I designed a decal and ordered it. Small, simple, and exactly right: Sofia. Too Glam to Give a Damn.
Chase was a big part of why we bought her. He’s a six-year-old Jack Russell mix with separation anxiety, strong opinions, and an almost offensive amount of heart.
Travel with him is complicated, and for years that meant we didn’t go anywhere. We are people who need to go somewhere. So we found another way.
At first, it was practical. An escape pod. A way to bring everything we needed and leave everything we didn’t. But it became something else: independence. Proof that our life could still move.
The first solo trip was just me and Chase, heading to Minnesota. A couple thousand miles each way, the two of us figuring it out together. Hitching, leveling, and learning the gag-inducing patience a black water tank demands of you.
Cade is the one who’s good at all that stuff. I never thought I would be.
But somewhere between Portland and the Montana border, I started to figure it out. Not perfectly. Not without frustration. But on my own, which turned out to matter more than I expected.
We stopped at a horse ranch outside Livingston, Montana. Mountains pressing close. Air that made my body feel quieter. The next morning I opened Sofia’s door to mist spilling down from the peaks and realized I’d been carrying a heavy, phantom anxiety for months.
Chase bounded through the grass on his leash, ears flapping, tail loose and easy. Watching him exhale made me exhale.
Later that summer, parked somewhere quiet with Cade, I stood outside over a cast iron pot and made the simplest stew I’d cooked in years. Onion, carrot, sausage, kale. One pot. No audience. And for the first time in longer than I want to admit, I didn’t feel dread when I picked up a knife.
I spent years cooking professionally: yachts, millionaires, menus that never felt like enough. The pressure slowly turned the thing I loved most into something I couldn’t face. I didn’t realize how much of that I was still carrying until Sofia helped take it away.
A two-burner stove made it impossible to perform. There was nothing to prove. Just food, made with care, for the man I love.
When Cade and I talked about selling her, he said it simply, the way he says most things that matter: “I will miss her. I feel like we didn’t get enough time, but we had a good time.”
That’s the whole of it, really. Right there in two sentences.
And still, I didn’t expect it to happen this fast.
Bob and Val arrived a day early.
We drove out to the storage place in Vancouver, turned on the lights and the heat, and did that last-minute primping you do when you want something you love to look its best.
Before they got there, Cade and I stood beside her under the sign and spoke to her like she was family.
“Thank you. I’m sorry it was so short. We would have kept choosing you if we could.” We told her we were sure Bob and Val were the right people.
The day we picked her up, I took a photo of Cade hugging her. That night, I took another one.
Cade didn’t say much. He just kept his hand on her like you do when you’re saying goodbye without wanting to. Then we hugged each other, which is when it finally hit.
Bob and Val were exactly the right people. Val kept saying, “Thank you for choosing us.” She didn’t say it once. She said it like she was trying to make sure we heard her. Like she couldn’t believe this was actually happening.
When we started walking them through the systems, she paid such close attention I could swear she wasn’t blinking.
It wasn’t just excitement. It was focus. She was taking mental snapshots of every word because she didn’t want to miss a single part of the moment.
We talked for two hours in that fluorescent storage-unit glow, swapping stories like we were handing over more than keys.
By the time we were done, I didn’t feel like we were losing Sofia. I felt like we were placing her.
Watching them hitch her up to their Honda Pilot and pull away, I didn’t feel loss exactly. It was more like the feeling of a long-haul flight finally touching down: a mix of relief, exhaustion, and not being quite ready to unbuckle yet.
I took a video as they drove out. I haven’t sent it yet. I think it’ll mean more once Sofia starts filling up with their memories instead of ours.
There’s something else I’m not quite ready to say out loud yet. Sofia isn’t the only thing we’re letting go of.
Portland is in there too, quietly, in the background, the way big things often are before they become real. I can feel the distance already, like a weather change in my chest.
After a family loss, time started moving differently. Faster. Like the decisions were already made somewhere deeper and we were just catching up.
The grief I feel surprises me a little, because I know it isn’t really about the trailer.
It’s about the version of myself I found inside her: the one who figured it out alone. The one who cooked again without fear. The one who pulled over somewhere beautiful and thought, I have something to say about this.
That person isn’t leaving with Bob and Val. But I’d be lying if I said I won’t miss having somewhere to put all of it.
Sometimes you have to let go of the thing that opened you up, trusting that you’ll stay open without it. That’s what I’m choosing to believe right now.
This is the last story I’ll run under Open Road Adventures.
ORA did its job. It gave me somewhere to put the truth until it stopped feeling like an emergency. I’m not erasing it. I’m keeping it as proof.
Now I’m moving into This is Ungarnished.
Food and travel, yes. But that’s just the doorway.
The point is always what happens to us when the scenery changes. I’m done keeping the most useful parts of myself off the page. I’m done sanding the edges just to sound respectable.
If you’ve been here a while, thank you. The voice isn’t changing. I’m just finally using all of it.
Come with me. The next chapter is going to be good.
Just an open hand.
And a couple from Wisconsin, driving east, toward everything we used to be.
And us, standing here in the aftermath, letting go with one hand and reaching forward with the other.
—R. Michael
R. Michael is a former luxury yacht chef, a food and travel writer, and a reliable source of opinions nobody asked for. This is Ungarnished.