North American Battle Wagons, or Honey, You Shrunk The Jeep

 I have been driving Jeeps for the majority of my "career".  I have been driving Jeep Wrangler TJ since 1996 without a stop.

This is my second TJ.  They are now getting thin on the ground, so I don't say "Oh Look!  A Parts Car!" as frequently as I did when I saw one. 

I still do the Jeep Wave, and I always would Tread Lightly when I was off road.  I haven't gone off road since moving to Florida in 2006 so he's been a Pavement Prince since then.

The thing is that when I got my first Jeep, a CJ7 back in 1984, I noticed that it was much higher than most cars on the road.  I used to be amused looking down into cars and seeing the goings on in there.

You folks are nuts!  All sorts of things happened!  I was immediately taught that if I could see down, so could the truck drivers in a "Big Rig" so I made sure not to do anything "untowards" in my own cars from that point on.

Then I went back to "regular cars" until my first and second Wranglers.  I noticed that I was above the majority of cars, but not as much as before.  So much so that it was a surprise when I saw someone enjoying the driver of the car ... from the passenger seat.

Wink! Wink! Say No More!

But that visual advantage was disappearing.  As time went on, I became "regular sized" if not a bit small.

Yes, a Jeep Wrangler is "average sized".  No longer, the current Jeep Wranglers have four doors and is just too big.  Bloated for me.

This was beaten home after I stopped at the end of the workout the other day.  Someone parked a wall next to me.  I fail to see why someone needs a full sized pickup truck, GMC Denali, just to get in a workout at a park.

This was the literal illustration of what I heard described as a North American Battle Wagon.  Massive.

I am 6'4" tall.  A Very Fit 193 CM, if my math is correct.  I am used to looking over things.  I tell people that I usually write my initials in the dust of their refrigerator tops when I visit.

I will wait until you check to see if I did.  Then you can clean your fridge top.  It's why mine is a "Counter Depth" and there's no gap at the top.   Saves me from cleaning!

There was no possible way I can see over the top of this truck.  In fact, standing next to it in my sneakers I was eye level with the driver's view.  Luckily the driver was on the trail getting their Beta Endorphins on.

I squeezed past this monster truck and thought to myself that I used to consider the old Toyota 4x4 trucks big when they came out in the late 1980s, and "what on earth!" would I have considered this beast when I was driving a little first generation Honda Accord in College? 

*shudder*

Getting the bike on the rack on the back, chuckling at my bumper sticker which proclaims "I workout because salads are boring", I had to squeeze past this huge beast to get in my now "Little" Jeep Wrangler.  The driver left adequate room but I am not used to not being able to look over the tops of things.  I see more bad haircuts than you may realize.

Driving home on US1, Federal Highway, in Pompano Beach and Fort Lauderdale, there was more.  It was driven home that we love huge trucks here and we are locked in an arms race of keeping up with the neighbor's beast trucks each time we upgrade.

There is a house down the block that the smallest truck that they own is what is now considered a Mid Sized truck, larger than my own Jeep.  It is about the size of a base Ford Truck that would be a Work Truck, stripper, these days.  They have so many trucks on their own suburban lot that it spills over the property line onto the neighbor's on one side, and the other side had put boulders on their side of the property line to stop them from "encroaching".

A bit drastic but I'd do the same.

So I guess my idea of getting a wee little, efficient, car is foolhardy.  I'd be a speed bump to these giant beasts in one of those.  I've done that before and thanks, I'll pass.

What's next?  Large cars are at best impractical, and at worst destroying the environment.  At one point in time, an AMC Gremlin got 18 MPG and they were advertised in the mid 1970s as being a "Fuel Saver".  I have a derivative of the same engine used in many of those cars and the 16 MPG I got in my last tank now is in no way thrifty.

The full sized pickup truck that was a loaner to a friend struggled to get 10 MPG city.  It dwarfed my own Jeep.  I know his driving patterns, he's much less "assertive" than I am on the road.

I don't know that there is a solution here, seeing the way politics are going.  At least with EVs, Hybrids, and Electrification, the efficiency of these things is getting better.  That old first generation, "Mark 1" Honda Accord I had got a reliable 30 MPG which is average in a car, low for a hybrid now.

Anything that small would be missed by one of those massive beasts coming out of a driveway.

Forget getting another Motorcycle.  My typo of "Mortal Cycle" must have been a Freudian slip due to the traffic we have here.  The woman on the scooter on the same trip home yesterday was dwarfed by my own "Little" Jeep, watching her weave in traffic had me terrified for her as she avoided one clueless huge beast after another.

I'm thinking that there really is no room for efficiency and a "tidy" rightsized car on the road any more.  Not here.  That would explain why someone commenting that "Bad Driving Has Become Normalized" makes so much sense to me. 

If they can't see you, you aren't there.

Good luck out there, I have an appointment at 1pm that I have to brave the other idiots on the road.  Trust me, if I can smell your pot smoke, that officer can as well.

And put that damn cellphone away, it's still against the law to use hands on cell phones in most jurisdictions.