Teleidoscope

Fri, Dec 22, 2006

Pickup Truck

Posted at 11:55 pm MST to Miscellaneous

Some people in New England think it is strange that I drive a Dodge Dakota Sport pickup truck with a stick shift. This month has provided two examples of why it makes sense for me to do so. First, two weeks ago I loaded it with stuff from the corporate housing apartment in Boston to haul it all home (after hauling most of the stuff from Colorado to Boston last May). And this afternoon I put it in 4-wheel drive mode and let it swim through the drifts to the end of my driveway. High-4 worked better than the low range, but the back of the truck was mostly empty. Putting on the chains probably wouldn't have helped much (and I hate putting on chains).

I got hung up in a drift when I tried to make the 90 degree turn uphill onto the gravel road. My neighbor very kindly dug me out with his garden tractor and gave me a plowed path as far as the end of his driveway, so I didn't need to shovel the drift at the road myself this time, but in general this is the way I have always dealt with drifted snow up here. Put the vehicle into 4 wheel drive and go forward until it stops, back up if possible and try again, and dig it out if it's high-centered. Play games with the clutch and get the rhytm just right: I don't think cars with automatic transmissions can swim through snow drifts. I usually only end up shovelling a small fraction of the distance from my house to the nearest place where other people are breaking trail.

My so-called driveway is more than a hundred feet long. For several years there has been another house whose driveway faces mine (it was built several years after I bought this place) but it seems to be empty this winter so I am alone at the end of the road. My neighbor with the tractor reorganized his driveway a few years ago so that it is now a semicircle with the nearer end only about 50 feet from mine, which helps. In my earliest years in this place, it was more than a hundred fifty feet from the end of my driveway to the nearest piece of road the served any house but mine.

Getting to my house counts as off-road driving in bad weather. And my driveway and the branch of the gravel nearest it isn't the reason I bought a Subaru station wagon the first November after I bought this house. The stretch of gravel road that leads from the paved road up onto the mesa (which does get plowed by the county) is so steep that it CANNOT be paved: it would have insufficient traction when wet or snowy. The first icy day in November after I bought this house, I realized my Escort hatchback didn't have the weight nor traction to climb that hill reliably in bad weather.

This is actually my second pickup truck -- when I got the first one I used to joke that I was having a midlife crisis that led me to buy a bright red 2-seater vehicle with 4 on the floor and a big engine. But, actually, a 4-wheel drive pickup is cheaper than a 4-wheel drive station wagon, even after you add a topper on the back. And it is has more cargo space and MUCH better clearance than a wagon, and generally better gas mileage than an SUV built on the same chassis would have, because it weighs less. That first truck was a Dodge Ram 50 labeled Mitsubishi everywhere except the tail gate and no frills at all.

The "Sport" Dakota means it has frills: air conditioning, cruise control and a bunch of other upgrades in the cab, so it's more like a car than a truck there. And I found a place that sells carpeted bed liners, so with the liner and a fancy fiberglas topper it is a lot like a cut-rate SUV.

The Dakota is another red truck, like the Ram 50. That was the first color on my list that showed up at the dealership after I told them I wanted a new truck. I won't willingly buy a vehicle that's white, gray or very pale blue (and I'm annoyed by the fact that standard rental cars seem to be overwhelmingly white or grey). My parents had two pale blue cars at one time -- a Plymouth Valiant and a Volkswagon Beetle -- and they complained that the cars tended to be invisible in bad weather, and said they would not get that color again. I agree: there is nothing harder to see in a slush storm than a slush colored car, even if the driver turns the lights on. And black and dark blue cars also have problems with visibility, and with heat on sunny days (and would show the dust terribly off the pavement here). So the vehicles I have owned have been, in order: medium green, a medium blue Escort, an "Aztec gold" Subaru wagon, and the two red trucks.

I think I'd like green or gold again next time, but the Dakota is in good shape and fairly low-mileage, and paid for. So unless I wreck it somehow, I plan to keep for a few more years.

permanent link || trackback || 0 comments || Add a comment