Looking back, my old Jeep Wrangler never stood a chance. The first time I took it off-roading was on the winding dirt street behind Hartwick College’s campus about 100 miles east of the Finger Lakes, in the sleepy hamlet of Oneonta, NY. Adventures of any kind were hard to come by there, so my friend and I made our own. Hootin’, hollerin’ and sportin’ a couple of devil-may-care grins, we smashed headlong into an oak tree going 40 mph—the airbags erupting from the dashboard in a cloud of chalky white dust. We somehow both walked away from the crash unhurt,…
