Marty's Travels

My house has wheels

Test Drive

An obvious first test drive would be the Olympic Mountains, the National Park, but the region’s air is so full of smoke, there would be no views. But just general driving around here’s what I’ve found so far.

I buy the most basic stock truck that I can, adding only the trailer package options. I require an FM radio and cruise control, but after that I can do without. Features that I got include On-star, which means my truck has it’s own cellphone and account. She (On-star) greets me every time I get in with “To turn off this message, activate an introductory account”. This is said by voice, like a robo-call. I have no intention of activating anything of hers.

I turned off the wi-fi in the truck. I’ll admit having a router built-in so I don’t have to remember to take mine is nice, but whose network is it using?

The computer is a BSD-Unix based system, same as I use at home, same as Android. I figure in 6 months I’ll have the dash plastic off and will be tapped into it. The security vulnerabilities of these things is astounding, and I’ll need to disable some of the things it does.

There are lots of boxes, cubbyholes, and cupholders. But no place for my sunglasses.

The power train is great. I’m looking forward to pulling with it so I can learn the transmission characteristics, which I can already see are different. One thing I like is that down-shift for descending hills kicks in automatically rather than by using “show by example” with the brake pedal while in tow-haul mode.

People I’ve talked to swear it’s great at pulling trailers, though I remain skeptical.