Dancing With The Tundra

[dascrow]

When I was young, my parents, Frank and Bernice Maynard, and my godmother, Maxine P. Clapper, were determined to groom me into a fine lady. My outfits came from Best and Company. I had lessons in piano, harp and organ; I went to dancing school and studied ballet and tap. I learned French and needlepoint, studied how to launder white gloves and listened to the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday afternoons while my mother and I made apple crisp.

What they didn’t teach me was how to elegantly get behind the wheel of a pickup. So when the Toyota Tundra arrived in my driveway last month for a short test drive, I was in for an adventure. Everyone, including Christopher Jensen, who reviewed the truck for The Times, remarks on how big this puppy is. They’re not kidding. When I first laid eyes on the Tundra in November at Toyota’s new factory in San Antonio, Texas, it dwarfed everyone around it. But I thought that might have as much to do with Texas as it did the pickup.

It isn’t just Texas talking here. The Tundra that Toyota sent me was the double cab version with a 5.7-liter V-8 engine and, sadly, no running board, which would have made things a whole lot easier.

My first attempt made me look like Heather Mills on one episode of Dancing With the Stars before she was eliminated. I wound up kissing my driveway. Like her, I wasn’t hurt, but I knew I had to come up with a strategy.
Let’s see, how about open door, reach up for the grab handle, lift and – then what? Hoisting myself directly behind the wheel took too big an effort, despite all the lat pull downs and chest flies that my trainer has been making me do.

I came up with my own version of the Texas two-step – call it the Tundra eight-step. Step one: open the door. Step two: grab handle. Step three: right foot goes up. Step four: left foot up.
Step five: pause for balance and reflection. Step six: ease behind the wheel. Step seven: sit down. Step eight: close the door and reach for lap belt.

That was the easy part. Parking was the next adventure, which became clear when I arrived at Ikea on a busy Saturday afternoon. The lot was so full that I did not have the option of parking the Tundra off by itself, which I had done on my first few outings. It was find a space and angle myself in, hoping that I neither scratched nor smashed any cars around me.
Thankfully, the Tundra has a backup camera, but I still held my breath, hoping I had left enough space between it and the vehicles next to it.

The weekend went by with a couple of close calls, no scrapes and one realization. There are an awful lot of Priuses in Ann Arbor. I counted eight in the parking lot at the Produce Station alone, including the ones parked to the right, left and rear of the Tundra.

They made it look like the Queen Mary, moored amid a fleet of speedboats, far and away the biggest vehicle on the fruit stand lot. To be honest, I was kind of relieved to give it back and return to my less-conspicuous crossover, which I can slide into without advance planning. But then came the e-mail message from Toyota’s Detroit office. “Our new CrewMax Tundras are in and ready to go,” it read. You mean there’s something even bigger than this one?

[Ga.Tundra]

Dascrow? Is this your story or someone else? If its not yours, who? and can they help me out with the below statement? Thats funny. So are you going to buy one or did you test drive it? I'm still waiting on my CrewMax to get here in Athens, Georgia. Is there anyway you can check on it? Its been almost 8 weeks now. Hope to read more of your stuff.

[dascrow]

Nope, here is the original link the story came from:

Dancing With The Tundra - Wheels - Autos - New York Times Blog

[Ga.Tundra]

cool, thanks.