‘Do it, Dad. Do it.’
‘I don’t know, Son. I just don’t know.’
‘Dad, come on! Put this bad-boy all-wheel drive SUV into X-Mode.’
Let’s back up a moment. On the road south from Crescent Head is another, less inviting turn off. It heads to a beach where the wind and the waves were almost certain to be on the ‘epic’ side of ‘fully sick.’ With boards on the roof and thoughts of grandeur in our heads, we were on a surfing type safari.
But then, I had been down this road before (the surf safari and this particular road) in a less appropriate vehicle. To be fair, it was a wagon from the 60’s, and things hadn’t ended particularly well.
So now, faced with the exuberance of youth and a head full of future surfing memories I was pressed to re-enter the fray. ‘I’ll do it,’ said my son, swatting my hand away from the screen. And he did. Just like that. He pressed the X-Mode button.
Woo-hoo! We were off.
I’m not sure what I thought would happen. Maybe there’d be bells or whistles or a ring-a-ding-ding. A clown might jump down from the roof rails, a marching band could emerge from a pothole. But there was nothing, just a light that indicated “X-Mode” was activated.
To be fair, I’d done the reading. At my heart, I’m my father’s son and a car nerd so whilst I haven’t committed the entire 500 or so pages of the owners’ manual to memory, I was excited about “X-Mode” for it basically turns the Outback SUV into a beast that can go “out back.”
The Outback already has full time Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive, but with “X-Mode” engaged, rough or treacherous or simply slippery conditions are sorted. The road ahead was no issue. The brakes, CVT and Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive all work together to ensure that me and my son with the fresh mullet haircut are free to chase the bombs rolling in from the Pacific Ocean.
With nothing to fear, I was a little surprised to feel a few butterflies bashing into the walls of my guts.
What if the waves are actually as good as he suspects? What if we can actually get to them without any genuine sense of worry? At 213mm, the ground clearance is excellent, this gnarly dirt road with potholes and mud and sand is no longer a reasonable excuse to hang back and talk up the old days when I was a charger.
Oh, God. I might actually have to try and surf, that would be a disaster.
So, with fingers crossed we went. The road was worse than I remembered, but more fun. It was actually great fun. We went deep, as the saying goes. And whilst the surf wasn’t quite what we expected, the drive in and out more than made up for it.
Andrew Daddo
Subaru Ambassador
04 May 2021
