I recently got back from a week away. It is a trip I've done for many years, typically in January. When I got home, I quickly looked through the pictures I took - a fraction of what I used to take when this annual excursion was more novel - and dumped the pictures into my vacation archives, also uploading them to Google Photos. I usually have a couple pictures I'll take to work to add to the pile that are used as part of my screen saver, but I was conscious that I didn't do that this year.
Reflecting on this, I think digital photography has robbed me of something. By getting more, I have much less. My Google Photos currently has 1323 pictures from 2016. A fraction of those are great and may be viewed occasionally or shared. I may at times scan through the bulk of them to look back at past vacations. But it is, frankly, too many...
Digital photography has brought a lot of improvements. We can't put the bullet back into the chamber on this one. By being able to take lots of pictures, more good photos will emerge and a few more great ones are possible. Still, 35mm cameras, and the expense of film, development, prints, enlargements, brought with it a scarcity mindset - carefully taking one or two pictures instead of today's 30 or 40. "I can delete them later." I rarely do. Careful review on the small camera LCD screen isn't practical. Why not just dump to archives and upload to Google Photos? Who has time to go through 218 pictures while on vacation?
Joe Bonomo wrote about The Blur Family in the book Brief Encounters. The book includes the actual picture which is sadly not present in the online version.
Reading through this, the memories and emotions it brings up sound more vivid, scream louder than if the person taking the photograph would have stopped and retaken the shot again (and again, and again) to "get it right" - by the fourth take, the faces may have been clear, but they would have been distracted by the annoyance of the uncomfortable stagedness of the picture; the younger children probably looking forlornly down at their Thanksgiving plates, the older kids rolling their eyes. Maybe they were anyway, but the poor (blurry) photography allows more historical interpretation.
Photography was even more prohibitively expensive when Mr. Bonomo's picture was taken (as an aside, why exactly he has a copy of a neighbor's Thanksgiving celebration is quite curious); I lived through this era as well. There are many family photos which might be viewed as either regretful and awkward, or cherished, depending on the viewer. It probably also depends on one's state of mind at the time of the viewing.
I loath the fakeness of 1970's portrait photography. Olin Mills pictures with one dimensional fake backdrops and awkward props up front. Why a suburban northern family pays large sums of money for a family photograph with a wooden wagon wheel in the foreground is oddly troubling. Maybe this still goes on today. If high school "senior pictures" are an indicator, things really have not improved.
Somewhere around 23 years ago, there was an attempt to create one of these family portraits for posterity for our family, recently expanded by marriage. My SO wisely stayed out of it. A step-sibling's SO did not, and when that relationship soured, the portrait was altered to change the now non-SO into a large potted plant. The plant stands strangely out of place. Computer generated people censoring the original vision of Kubrick's movie Eyes Wide Shut, new characters added to the bar scene in Star Wars, a sock puppet planted in a Ruben painting.
Somewhere, I may have a copy of the original picture. That picture is a historical record - a vision at least closer to the reality of how things existed. One SO not shown, one SO an example of what we've all been through. If I come across that original picture, I'd like to get it enlarged to cover over the altered picture. Revert history to its original copy. Maybe history written by the victors can be rewritten by the small.
I find adults arguing about Facebook as perplexing (this should end somewhere around junior high school), but was recently encouraged that someone wanted to download a picture that was never posted for a memory book. I was encouraged that anyone creates memory books anymore, assuming it is a physical book and not some dreadful Facebook tool...
I had one picture from my 1970's memory book that I hated - hated with a passion. I guess I could have altered it; added the potted plant over me wearing a football helmet on my bike. But no, I removed it. The memory that remains after the picture has been discarded. I hate that memory too, but at least the physical manifestation is gone.
I sometimes wonder if the negative exists somewhere in a dusty cardboard box somewhere. Piles of negatives are the silver halide version of Google Photos, I guess. Over the ensuing decades, it is almost a certainty that the negative is long gone.
I have boxes of 35mm pictures as well. Much like I have too many google photos, I probably have too many 35mm as well - just not nearly as many. But I did recently go through them, trying to find at least one picture taken while in each state. I was surprised how easy it was to find what I was looking for since the boxes of photos (and negatives) are roughly in chronological order. Digital (Google Photos) imitates Analog...
Maybe my omission of a picture to be used from my recent adventure for my work screen saver was just a temporary oversight. After thinking about it, I grabbed one from Google Photos and dropped it in my work computer's screen saver folder.
Sunday, January 29, 2017
Friday, January 13, 2017
Driverless Cars: Our Near Term Dystopia
Somewhere around 1995, a manager, Bill, at work commented how he was not looking forward to the day when he had to pull over to the side of the road and reboot his car. To be clear, we are already there and have been for some time. We were really there already in 1995.
Every new car has some form of the rather unhelpful "Check Engine Soon" light. These lights rarely lie, although faults that they signal may be intermittent or transitory. Whether the identified fault will cause imminent and catastrophic damage, or it is merely an aged sensor beginning to slow, the driver is free to continue merrily on the way - or nervously on the way depending on his or her level of chronic worrying.
This situation IS the "pulling over the car to reboot" - but the default state is to allow the driver to continue. The default to continue does not work in a driverless car future; the fail-safe is to be immediately off the road until all systems are go. Without the driver, the job of many of the sensors and associated software takes on a more life-altering role beyond the life of the automobile and beyond the life of those in that immediate automobile. Until driverless technology becomes mundane and invisible, this paints a very frustrating future vision.
Luckily robots are not programmed with a sense of fairness, but reliability of "things" is expected to be much higher than of people. Brakes are expected to work 100% of the time, even if a human doesn't use them appropriately and takes on a telephone pole. Computers are supposed to boot up every time even if someone clicks on a phishing link and opens the computer up to external control. Cars are supposed to start even if basic maintenance is sometimes ignored. So it will be with autonomous vehicles; every situation encountered will be expected to be handled expertly, even if that isn't the standard for humans. If a deer runs in front of a driverless car, while the car is driving through an oil patch with winds dropping a tree across the road and the car crashes, it will be interpreted as a vehicle/software failure. Developing vehicles to drive autonomously through 75% driving situations is probably feasible right now. Expand that to 95% and it gets difficult, 99% harder. That last 0.001%, becomes nearly impossible...
Cars are also being developed for the globe, bringing efficiency to manufacturing reducing development costs. Creating autonomous cars that will work as well in Minot, North Dakota as they will in New Delhi, India seems daunting, unless global development reverts to regional vehicles - this is economically unlikely and increases the technical difficulty even further.
I actually enjoy driving. No, getting stuck in heavy gridlock isn't fun, but I've organized my life so that is rare. I even often enjoy the daily commute, although the destination may not be ideal.
Listening to the media would suggest I'm a dinosaur in this, but I don't buy it. I think this is partially due to the growing urban/not-urban divide, which itself is painted with a city-scape lens by the largely urban media.
Uber - basically a less unsexy taxi cab - and driverless cars are now prompting clairvoyant wizards to foresee the death of the personal automobile. Even douche bags are telling us cars are sooooo 2012 (I've never met this douche bag, but reading what he has written certainly suggests he's quite comfortable in his douche-bag-ness).
We've seen this before. Dean Kamen told us the Segway was going to revolutionize cities. Cities were going to be torn down and rebuilt all around his mall-cop-mobile scooter; cars were going to be melted down and turned into Segways. Dean Kamen may be a smart guy, but he must live in a very narrow bubble.
The one thing we can predict, is that we can not predict the future. Technology can be envisioned, but how it is implemented is something different entirely. And how it eventually gets used once it is in the grubby paws of the average person is different still.
Because the future can't be predicted, I'm going to go ahead and predict the future.
1) Driverless roadways are decades away.
There are a lot of old cars out there. Vehicle quality continues to improve, and older cars are remaining reliable for longer and longer. The often-cited average age is 11 years. And that is average, meaning half are older than that. Not only that, but how driverless technology will interact with drivers is evolving slowly. Driverless cars can be programmed to respond in a very predictable manner, but the remaining analog interface (the human) can not - whether in a driverless car or not. There are also a lot of other interests that play a role in addition to millennials who don't want to drive (the difference between an interest and a special interest is whether one agrees with it or not): motorcycles, bicycles, antique and vintage automobiles, roadkill.
Much like the houses of the future are only slowly showing up due to a lack of infrastructure and because nobody is tearing down all the old houses to build new ones, driverless roadways will need infrastructure improvements that don't currently exist - we can't even currently keep our bridges safe and roads (relatively) free of potholes, adding in new infrastructure (and ongoing maintenance) seems even more unlikely.
2) Driver aiding technology is here and will continue to be grow.
Driver aiding technology is currently at the curiosity stage. Tesla's successes and failures are widely and loudly reported. Fairly or not, this is true whether the technology was being used as intended or not. Quoted from above: "And how it eventually gets used once it is in the grubby paws of the average person is different still."
Every manufacturer is looking at some form of driver aided technology, and calling it driverless. Regulations are slowly evolving, which is probably a good thing.
Some of this will be good. Some will be bad.
3) Driver aiding technology will be expensive and frustrating - at first.
Cruise control, fuel injection, anti-lock brakes, throttle by wire, touch screens, dual-clutch transmissions, etc... These are just a few examples of technology that was first available on (primarily) expensive vehicles, but worked its way down to plebeian cars. Once in average-joe-mobiles, these things usually work, but still have levels of evolution to go through until they reach nirvana - aka nobody thinks about them anymore. Until that point is reached, it can be frustrating. So it will be with driverless aids.
But advances will be made. Nobody thinks about cruise control, fuel injection and anti-lock brakes anymore (and few would want to go back to carburetors or drum brakes on all four corners). Touch screens and dual-clutch automatic transmissions are getting pretty good, with some warts still showing.
There is a fundamental difference, fuel injection was and is happy existing within the confines of the individual vehicle. If fuel injection required all (or most) other cars on the road to also be fuel injected, or a complicated set of rules for the fuel injection to work and for the carbureted vehicles to aspirate fuel, the evolution of fuel injection would have been very slow.
I certainly hope we are not setting ourselves up for a late-1970s re-reality, where the mandates for fuel efficiency and emissions got so far ahead of the technology that the result was a lot of really malaiseful cars.
4) Somehow, driver aiding technology will be used for porn.
Every technological advancement always seems to be used for porn. Glossy magazines, VHS, DVD, HD-DVD, online streaming, cell phones, smart phone, personal computers, real-time streaming... So somehow I'm sure driverless cars will be used for porn too.
Sadly, I may actually be a dinosaur. I'm not really looking forward to the current vision of the dystopian driverless future. I enjoy driving. I even still prefer a manual transmission. I'd be lost without a motorcycle. What I'm encouraged by is that this change will happen much slower than what visionaries are sure of - and it will look a lot different than they see as well.
Every new car has some form of the rather unhelpful "Check Engine Soon" light. These lights rarely lie, although faults that they signal may be intermittent or transitory. Whether the identified fault will cause imminent and catastrophic damage, or it is merely an aged sensor beginning to slow, the driver is free to continue merrily on the way - or nervously on the way depending on his or her level of chronic worrying.
This situation IS the "pulling over the car to reboot" - but the default state is to allow the driver to continue. The default to continue does not work in a driverless car future; the fail-safe is to be immediately off the road until all systems are go. Without the driver, the job of many of the sensors and associated software takes on a more life-altering role beyond the life of the automobile and beyond the life of those in that immediate automobile. Until driverless technology becomes mundane and invisible, this paints a very frustrating future vision.
Luckily robots are not programmed with a sense of fairness, but reliability of "things" is expected to be much higher than of people. Brakes are expected to work 100% of the time, even if a human doesn't use them appropriately and takes on a telephone pole. Computers are supposed to boot up every time even if someone clicks on a phishing link and opens the computer up to external control. Cars are supposed to start even if basic maintenance is sometimes ignored. So it will be with autonomous vehicles; every situation encountered will be expected to be handled expertly, even if that isn't the standard for humans. If a deer runs in front of a driverless car, while the car is driving through an oil patch with winds dropping a tree across the road and the car crashes, it will be interpreted as a vehicle/software failure. Developing vehicles to drive autonomously through 75% driving situations is probably feasible right now. Expand that to 95% and it gets difficult, 99% harder. That last 0.001%, becomes nearly impossible...
Cars are also being developed for the globe, bringing efficiency to manufacturing reducing development costs. Creating autonomous cars that will work as well in Minot, North Dakota as they will in New Delhi, India seems daunting, unless global development reverts to regional vehicles - this is economically unlikely and increases the technical difficulty even further.
I actually enjoy driving. No, getting stuck in heavy gridlock isn't fun, but I've organized my life so that is rare. I even often enjoy the daily commute, although the destination may not be ideal.
Listening to the media would suggest I'm a dinosaur in this, but I don't buy it. I think this is partially due to the growing urban/not-urban divide, which itself is painted with a city-scape lens by the largely urban media.
Uber - basically a less unsexy taxi cab - and driverless cars are now prompting clairvoyant wizards to foresee the death of the personal automobile. Even douche bags are telling us cars are sooooo 2012 (I've never met this douche bag, but reading what he has written certainly suggests he's quite comfortable in his douche-bag-ness).
We've seen this before. Dean Kamen told us the Segway was going to revolutionize cities. Cities were going to be torn down and rebuilt all around his mall-cop-mobile scooter; cars were going to be melted down and turned into Segways. Dean Kamen may be a smart guy, but he must live in a very narrow bubble.
The one thing we can predict, is that we can not predict the future. Technology can be envisioned, but how it is implemented is something different entirely. And how it eventually gets used once it is in the grubby paws of the average person is different still.
Because the future can't be predicted, I'm going to go ahead and predict the future.
1) Driverless roadways are decades away.
There are a lot of old cars out there. Vehicle quality continues to improve, and older cars are remaining reliable for longer and longer. The often-cited average age is 11 years. And that is average, meaning half are older than that. Not only that, but how driverless technology will interact with drivers is evolving slowly. Driverless cars can be programmed to respond in a very predictable manner, but the remaining analog interface (the human) can not - whether in a driverless car or not. There are also a lot of other interests that play a role in addition to millennials who don't want to drive (the difference between an interest and a special interest is whether one agrees with it or not): motorcycles, bicycles, antique and vintage automobiles, roadkill.
Much like the houses of the future are only slowly showing up due to a lack of infrastructure and because nobody is tearing down all the old houses to build new ones, driverless roadways will need infrastructure improvements that don't currently exist - we can't even currently keep our bridges safe and roads (relatively) free of potholes, adding in new infrastructure (and ongoing maintenance) seems even more unlikely.
2) Driver aiding technology is here and will continue to be grow.
Driver aiding technology is currently at the curiosity stage. Tesla's successes and failures are widely and loudly reported. Fairly or not, this is true whether the technology was being used as intended or not. Quoted from above: "And how it eventually gets used once it is in the grubby paws of the average person is different still."
Every manufacturer is looking at some form of driver aided technology, and calling it driverless. Regulations are slowly evolving, which is probably a good thing.
Some of this will be good. Some will be bad.
3) Driver aiding technology will be expensive and frustrating - at first.
Cruise control, fuel injection, anti-lock brakes, throttle by wire, touch screens, dual-clutch transmissions, etc... These are just a few examples of technology that was first available on (primarily) expensive vehicles, but worked its way down to plebeian cars. Once in average-joe-mobiles, these things usually work, but still have levels of evolution to go through until they reach nirvana - aka nobody thinks about them anymore. Until that point is reached, it can be frustrating. So it will be with driverless aids.
But advances will be made. Nobody thinks about cruise control, fuel injection and anti-lock brakes anymore (and few would want to go back to carburetors or drum brakes on all four corners). Touch screens and dual-clutch automatic transmissions are getting pretty good, with some warts still showing.
There is a fundamental difference, fuel injection was and is happy existing within the confines of the individual vehicle. If fuel injection required all (or most) other cars on the road to also be fuel injected, or a complicated set of rules for the fuel injection to work and for the carbureted vehicles to aspirate fuel, the evolution of fuel injection would have been very slow.
I certainly hope we are not setting ourselves up for a late-1970s re-reality, where the mandates for fuel efficiency and emissions got so far ahead of the technology that the result was a lot of really malaiseful cars.
4) Somehow, driver aiding technology will be used for porn.
Every technological advancement always seems to be used for porn. Glossy magazines, VHS, DVD, HD-DVD, online streaming, cell phones, smart phone, personal computers, real-time streaming... So somehow I'm sure driverless cars will be used for porn too.
Sadly, I may actually be a dinosaur. I'm not really looking forward to the current vision of the dystopian driverless future. I enjoy driving. I even still prefer a manual transmission. I'd be lost without a motorcycle. What I'm encouraged by is that this change will happen much slower than what visionaries are sure of - and it will look a lot different than they see as well.
Saturday, January 7, 2017
2017 Honda Ridgeline
Somewhere around 1993, my friend and neighbor sold his Ford Ranger and bought a Ford Bronco II. His Ranger had served him well, but with a new kid, and a need for four wheel drive to get through Michigan winters, he made the jump. When he got the title to the Bronco, he laughed - showing me where in the "Body Style" box, it said, "Station Wagon." We looked at the Bronco, at its shape, two rows of seating with storage area out back and no trunk. Yep, it is a station wagon.
The Honda Ridgeline is not a real truck.
Or so we keep getting told over and over. In fact, when you buy a Ridgeline, you also get a pink frilly tutu to wear while driving it.
No, The Harley Davidson Sportster is not a real motorcycle. The Ducati Monster is not a real sport bike.
The Ruger American is not a real rifle. The Beretta 92FS is not a real handgun.
Lund is the only real boat. Real houses must be stick built.
The purists have had their say, and they are right. Always.
A short time ago, I traded in my 2009 Toyota Tacoma on a new 2017 Honda Ridgeline. I have to start by saying, despite a sometimes love/hate relationship, the Taco was a good vehicle. In eight years and over 100,000 miles, it has had more good than bad moments. But there were some items that were coming up, somewhere between repairs and maintenance, that would need to be addressed. These would likely be painful, so it just made more sense to take the plunge.
I thought about another Taco, but the new model is much more evolutionary than revolutionary with many of the same known weak points.
And while the Taco was overall good, several minor repairs over the years showed a build that would have been far more reliable if trivial changes had been made. As an example, a few extra cents on the fasteners for the exhaust shields would have made them last the life of the vehicle over the eye-glass sized screws that held them together only briefly.
For reasons I won't go into here, my choices were narrowed down to the Ford F-150 and the Honda Ridgeline. Apples and oranges.
I actually test drove the F-150 first and like it more than I thought I would. It is, frankly, bigger than I need and even with substantial discounts, getting what I wanted in my next new vehicle would have meant trade-offs by getting some of what I don't want with a higher cost. This is the case even with substantial discounts (A-Plan) and current rebates.
Cost aside, my choice was made when I actually test drove the Ridgeline.
And in a situation that continues my string of punctured tires in 2016, the Ridgeline had a screw in the tire at test drive. New tire since installed. I hope 2017 will have better inflation.
Like many truck owners, I probably don't NEED a truck. However, there are many times when having a truck makes life easier to the point that if I didn't have one, I'd probably need at least a small trailer; I do not want to have another wheeled thing to keep stored away some where. A truck makes far more sense than a trailer and a car that can pull it. I've not yet figured out how to go hunting and carry bloody critters around after the fact without either a truck, or a lot of hassle. Truck it is...
So I need a truck to carry bulky and bloody stuff. I don't need to tow a houseboat. I don't need to drive half way up Denali. I don't need to carry a 2-ton generator in the bed to a job site.
As a truck, the Ridgeline IS everything I need.
The Ridgeline is what it is, but it does not pretend to be something it is not.
If you want a four wheel drive vehicle to rock crawl in the Mojave, a Ridgeline is not your best choice; get a jeep with front and rear locking differentials.
If you want a truck to tow a backhoe around, get a GM2500HD.
If you want a real man's 4-Wheeler, get an International Scout (My siblings and I used to get driven to school in one of these on winter days. Those brutal aluminum bleacher seats and a rusted out floor with winter coming through forces a kid to be tough.)
If you need a wheeled vehicle which can go absolutely anywhere, get a SHERP ATV (google it).
If you ignore the chatter of the body-on-frame-or-nothing crowd, the Ridgeline makes far more sense than most other trucks for the vast majority of buyers. For the body-on-frame crowd, this was probably good advice ... in 1982.
The vehicle is comparable to other similar sized trucks in the areas of payload and towing. It is far more capable than my 4-cylinder Taco it is replacing.
The ride quality is infinitely better than other midsized or full sized trucks.
The fuel economy is better, but only marginally. I think overall the fuel economy of all trucks is lacking. I'm curious what the maybe-someday new Ford Ranger will be - an Ecoboost 4 cylinder sounds quite intriguing. Damn the Chicken Tax as there is a demand for efficient capable open-bedded vehicles of a less substantial girth.
The AWD drive system on the Ridgeline is better at handling varying winter road conditions than the dedicated 4WD on most trucks. Journalist and owner reviews I've read show it is at least capable during off-road situations.
The bottom line: I can't think of anything over the last eight years I've done in my Tacoma that the Ridgeline would not also be able to capably handle, but I can think of many times when the Ridgeline would have been a better choice.
Of the various trucks I've owned over the last few decades, my favorite was and is my 1994 F-150 - a truck I spectacularly totaled in the late 1990s. As full sized trucks have continued to grow, the Ridgline is nearly the same size as that 1994, but with a more usable interior. I can only hope I'll like it as much as that Ford in the long run.
The proof will be in thepudding blood. I've got a road trip with a hunting destination coming up which will be a good test of the long-haul driving and the capability for some off-road conditions.
So, mock the Ridgeline if you must, frilly tutu or not. But first question the need for a larger, less comfortable vehicle used for the 95% of what most trucks are used for. Look at the K5 Blazer, and realize it is just a station wagon on steroids. Wonder why a $50,000 King Ranch F series always seems to be parked at the mall - at least I think - I haven't actually been to a mall in a few years.
Time will be the ultimate test of the Ridgeline, but I'm really looking forward to that time. There will be an in depth review some time after more real world miles are on the truck.
The Honda Ridgeline is not a real truck.
Or so we keep getting told over and over. In fact, when you buy a Ridgeline, you also get a pink frilly tutu to wear while driving it.
No, The Harley Davidson Sportster is not a real motorcycle. The Ducati Monster is not a real sport bike.
The Ruger American is not a real rifle. The Beretta 92FS is not a real handgun.
Lund is the only real boat. Real houses must be stick built.
The purists have had their say, and they are right. Always.
A short time ago, I traded in my 2009 Toyota Tacoma on a new 2017 Honda Ridgeline. I have to start by saying, despite a sometimes love/hate relationship, the Taco was a good vehicle. In eight years and over 100,000 miles, it has had more good than bad moments. But there were some items that were coming up, somewhere between repairs and maintenance, that would need to be addressed. These would likely be painful, so it just made more sense to take the plunge.
I thought about another Taco, but the new model is much more evolutionary than revolutionary with many of the same known weak points.
And while the Taco was overall good, several minor repairs over the years showed a build that would have been far more reliable if trivial changes had been made. As an example, a few extra cents on the fasteners for the exhaust shields would have made them last the life of the vehicle over the eye-glass sized screws that held them together only briefly.
For reasons I won't go into here, my choices were narrowed down to the Ford F-150 and the Honda Ridgeline. Apples and oranges.
I actually test drove the F-150 first and like it more than I thought I would. It is, frankly, bigger than I need and even with substantial discounts, getting what I wanted in my next new vehicle would have meant trade-offs by getting some of what I don't want with a higher cost. This is the case even with substantial discounts (A-Plan) and current rebates.
Cost aside, my choice was made when I actually test drove the Ridgeline.
And in a situation that continues my string of punctured tires in 2016, the Ridgeline had a screw in the tire at test drive. New tire since installed. I hope 2017 will have better inflation.
Like many truck owners, I probably don't NEED a truck. However, there are many times when having a truck makes life easier to the point that if I didn't have one, I'd probably need at least a small trailer; I do not want to have another wheeled thing to keep stored away some where. A truck makes far more sense than a trailer and a car that can pull it. I've not yet figured out how to go hunting and carry bloody critters around after the fact without either a truck, or a lot of hassle. Truck it is...
So I need a truck to carry bulky and bloody stuff. I don't need to tow a houseboat. I don't need to drive half way up Denali. I don't need to carry a 2-ton generator in the bed to a job site.
As a truck, the Ridgeline IS everything I need.
The Ridgeline is what it is, but it does not pretend to be something it is not.
If you want a four wheel drive vehicle to rock crawl in the Mojave, a Ridgeline is not your best choice; get a jeep with front and rear locking differentials.
If you want a truck to tow a backhoe around, get a GM2500HD.
If you want a real man's 4-Wheeler, get an International Scout (My siblings and I used to get driven to school in one of these on winter days. Those brutal aluminum bleacher seats and a rusted out floor with winter coming through forces a kid to be tough.)
If you need a wheeled vehicle which can go absolutely anywhere, get a SHERP ATV (google it).
If you ignore the chatter of the body-on-frame-or-nothing crowd, the Ridgeline makes far more sense than most other trucks for the vast majority of buyers. For the body-on-frame crowd, this was probably good advice ... in 1982.
The vehicle is comparable to other similar sized trucks in the areas of payload and towing. It is far more capable than my 4-cylinder Taco it is replacing.
The ride quality is infinitely better than other midsized or full sized trucks.
The fuel economy is better, but only marginally. I think overall the fuel economy of all trucks is lacking. I'm curious what the maybe-someday new Ford Ranger will be - an Ecoboost 4 cylinder sounds quite intriguing. Damn the Chicken Tax as there is a demand for efficient capable open-bedded vehicles of a less substantial girth.
The AWD drive system on the Ridgeline is better at handling varying winter road conditions than the dedicated 4WD on most trucks. Journalist and owner reviews I've read show it is at least capable during off-road situations.
The bottom line: I can't think of anything over the last eight years I've done in my Tacoma that the Ridgeline would not also be able to capably handle, but I can think of many times when the Ridgeline would have been a better choice.
Of the various trucks I've owned over the last few decades, my favorite was and is my 1994 F-150 - a truck I spectacularly totaled in the late 1990s. As full sized trucks have continued to grow, the Ridgline is nearly the same size as that 1994, but with a more usable interior. I can only hope I'll like it as much as that Ford in the long run.
The proof will be in the
So, mock the Ridgeline if you must, frilly tutu or not. But first question the need for a larger, less comfortable vehicle used for the 95% of what most trucks are used for. Look at the K5 Blazer, and realize it is just a station wagon on steroids. Wonder why a $50,000 King Ranch F series always seems to be parked at the mall - at least I think - I haven't actually been to a mall in a few years.
Time will be the ultimate test of the Ridgeline, but I'm really looking forward to that time. There will be an in depth review some time after more real world miles are on the truck.
Sunday, January 1, 2017
January 1, 2017
Do we celebrate the end of the old year? Or the beginning of the new year?
I won't admit what time I fell asleep on New Year's Eve, but will admit it was well before 12:00 AM on January 1, 2017.
This seems a fitting end to a year that was pleasant but unremarkable. I probably prefer bringing in the new year in a more contemplative manner.
I sort of already wrote an end-of-year post that was just supposed to just be about cornbread pecan waffles. I did start out the first morning of 2017 with some of them.
Like previous years, I time lapsed my back yard in 2016. As with the year 2016, it is somewhat unremarkable. There was some winter and spring snow. Soybeans were planted in the spring. There was lots of mowing and some swampage in the summer. Soybeans were harvested and things started to die in the fall. Winter came with one snowfall for December.
I've reached a point where I will never try to predict what 2017 will bring, nor will I set any major goals. I'll spend too much time at work. I plan on traveling at least enough to keep things interesting. But I know that at this point, there are more unknowns than knowns.
That may be the magic of throwing away the old calendar - knowing that there is more continuity than novelty. So celebrations near 11:59:59 on December 31 probably represent neither ends nor beginnings ... but something else altogether.
I won't admit what time I fell asleep on New Year's Eve, but will admit it was well before 12:00 AM on January 1, 2017.
This seems a fitting end to a year that was pleasant but unremarkable. I probably prefer bringing in the new year in a more contemplative manner.
I sort of already wrote an end-of-year post that was just supposed to just be about cornbread pecan waffles. I did start out the first morning of 2017 with some of them.
Like previous years, I time lapsed my back yard in 2016. As with the year 2016, it is somewhat unremarkable. There was some winter and spring snow. Soybeans were planted in the spring. There was lots of mowing and some swampage in the summer. Soybeans were harvested and things started to die in the fall. Winter came with one snowfall for December.
I've reached a point where I will never try to predict what 2017 will bring, nor will I set any major goals. I'll spend too much time at work. I plan on traveling at least enough to keep things interesting. But I know that at this point, there are more unknowns than knowns.
That may be the magic of throwing away the old calendar - knowing that there is more continuity than novelty. So celebrations near 11:59:59 on December 31 probably represent neither ends nor beginnings ... but something else altogether.
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