DRIVING TECHNIQUE
Driving a pickup at high speed is a difficult skill to master. The first step is to assume the proper driving position: Use one hand to firmly grasp the drip rail on the roof. This takes the place of shoulder harness, lap belt, and air bag and lets you give the finger to people with anti-handgun bumper stickers on their cars. Then place your other hand on the gearshift knob so you’ll always know what gear you’re in (which is second, as I pointed out before). Now take your third hand . . . Perhaps some picture of the difficulty is beginning to emerge. Anyway, be sure to balance your beer can carefully in your lap.
The second step is to drive over to the 7-Eleven and get more beer. Use your down vest to mop up the one you spilled all over your crotch as you backed out the driveway.
The third step is cornering technique. There are three ways to take a high-speed curve in a pickup. The first way is to use the traditional racecar driver’s “late apex”: Go deep into the curve at full speed doing all your downshifting and useless brake-pedal pumping in a straight line. Then, in one smooth motion, turn the wheel to the full extent necessary for the curve. Aim for an apex slightly past the geometrical apex of the inside edge of the curve and slowly bring the steering wheel back to straight ahead as you reapply the throttle. This will put your truck into the woods. The second way to take a fast curve is to come into the curve slightly slower, dial in a greater amount of steering, and stay on the throttle so as to propel the truck into a “power slide.” This will put your truck in the woods too. The third method is to come to a full stop before entering the curve and have a beer. While you’re doing that someone else will come along in another pickup truck and knock you into the woods anyway.
Now that you’ve wrecked a pickup and are an experienced pickup truck driver, it’s important to know what to tell the police. Tell them a deer ran into the road. This happens very frequently in the places where we rednecks live, especially when we’ve been drinking. For example, below are the five most common explanations made to the North Carolina Highway Patrol by drivers who have put their pickup trucks into the woods:
1. A deer ran into the road.
2. A deer ran into the road.
3. A deer ran into the road.
4. A deer ran into the road.
5. I was stopped at a stop sign but I had to start up again real fast and run my pickup into the woods because otherwise it would have been smashed by this deer that ran into the road.
PURCHASE, REPAIR, AND
MAINTENANCE OF THE
HIGH-PERFORMANCE
PICKUP TRUCK
If, however, you still haven’t wrecked a pickup truck and are weighing the obvious delights of having an opportunity to do so against such considerations as wanting to be a redneck but only having enough money to be middle-class or having a wife who thought she was marrying a college-educated account executive, here are some points for you to consider. First, how much will a pickup truck cost?
Pickup
$ 9360.00
Beer
2.89
Another pickup to replace first one that you wreck
9360.00
Rabbit for wife, who won’t drive truck
8750.00
TOTAL
$27,472.89
That’s a fair piece of change. But on the other hand, pickup trucks are virtually maintenance-free. In fact, all pickup repairs can be done with a long chain. Attach one end of the chain to the pickup truck, drop the other end of the chain on the ground, and go buy a real car.
You may also want to know if a pickup truck is truly useful. I’m afraid the answer is yes—all too much so.
UTILITY COMPARISON
Pickup vs. Real Car
USE
PICK-UP
REAL CAR
Brush hauling
Yes, I’ll do it
tomorrow.
Good excuse not to
haul brush.
Taking trash to dump
Really, I’ll do it
tomorrow. The
Falcons are playing
Dallas.
Call Goodwill.
Furniture loads
Room for five-piece
bedroom set and
expensive oriental
rug.
Have plenty of
furniture already,
don’t need any
more.
But, when all is said and done, it really would have looked silly at the end of Easy Rider if Peter Fonda and Dennis Hooper had been shot by a couple of guys in a Fiat Brava. And what’s life for if you never get a chance to shoot the likes of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper? Besides, you’ll never really appreciate the profound and astonishing beauties of nature if you don’t get stuck in the woods now and then. And you won’t appreciate them half as much if you don’t have a lot of beer along.
A Cool and Logical
Analysis of the
Bicycle Menace
And an examination of
the actions necessary to
license, regulate, or
abolish entirely this
dreadful peril on our
roads
Our nation is afflicted with a plague of bicycles. Everywhere the public right-of-way is glutted with whirring, unbalanced contraptions of rubber, wire, and cheap steel pipe. Riders of these flimsy appliances pay no heed to stop signs or red lights. They dart from between parked cars, dash along double yellow lines, and whiz through crosswalks right over the toes of law-abiding citizens like me.