Chevrolet pickup truck

Yesterday (Wednesday, February 21, 2007) while driving down I-390 from the funky food-market in far-away Henrietta, I was passed by a new white Chevrolet pickup truck doing 152 mph.
This is the same truck Chevrolet stands in front of the Grand Tetons and advertises as “America’s truck.”

Actually it looks pretty fair. More modern than the new Dodge, and by comparison the Ford trucks look ancient.
There was only one problem: it was HUGE.
The all-powerful Tim Belknap decries the 1995 F250 he inherited from his recently-deceased brother as an aircraft-carrier, and calls it the U.S.S. Belknap.
I visited the mighty Mezz a few weeks ago, and the U.S.S. Belknap was in the so-called elitist parking-lot, and it was twice as big as anything else. Almost the entire pickup-bed was sticking out beyond the lines.
Belknap has had to switch from driving his beloved ‘93 Dakota because the master-cylinder packed up leaving him without brakes.
Many years ago we had a ‘79 Ford E250 van we used to call the “Queen Mary.”

The Keed with Pentax.

Queen-Mary at Grand Tetons.

I still think it’s the neatest vehicle we ever owned, but parking it at Weggers took two moves.
First was setup, wherein you approached the parking-slot and stopped at about a 45° angle.
Second was back-up to better align with the slot.
Third was actually drive into the slot and park.
You couldn’t just turn into the slot — it was too big! (138-inch wheelbase.)
Belknap’s F250 is like that — like navigating a ship on a river — try to not hit the bridge-pilings.
In Philly with Mahz-n-Wawdzzz at Rohm and Haas I watched an ore-ship for Morrisville Steel pass through the tiny opening of the Delair railroad-bridge.
That ship was as long as the river was wide. It’s width had obviously been designed to just clear the Delair railroad-bridge opening. —Which meant the pilot had to compensate for tides/currents/wakes/whatever to not take out the bridge.
He made it — took at least two minutes for the entire ship to clear.
Belknap’s F250 is big, but not as big as this new Chevy. A giant white apparition blasting up the interstate.
If he had hit anything, it woulda been flattened.
How does one justify such excess?
I thought the Hummer was excessive too, but compared to this Chevy it’s a wimp.

Delair bridge was originally built with a rotating center-span on a table; but that restricted ship-width. The rotating center-span was removed and replaced by a lift-span that lifted at each end, almost doubling ship-width clearance — since the table was also removed.