Time off for the holidays has meant travel, projects, and jumping back into Persona 3 Reload so I don't keep Jeff's disk forever. Incidentally, I drove a Cybertruck enough to write some words about it and had a novel interaction with FedEx customer service.

Gliderport

Dani and I took a quick trip to the gliderport just as thick fog rolled in over the water. She's in a climbing phase, so the terrain was a big hit.

There's some stair/retaining wall work being done at the top of the Black's Beach path.

I'm always scoping other people's methods, so to continue the wood preservation saga, I noticed that 10w-40 was being used for water/termite mitigation.

Family

We spent a few days up in NorCal.

Toys

Dani is all about the Legos. We built a space shuttle, a go-kart, a beach cabana, and a sizeable Animal Crossing set with a building that "looks like the Mayor Goodway house" (Adventure Bay city hall). Dani's old daycare teachers remembered her love of PJ Masks and got her a book and slide projector as well as a Yoto player. She's loving the Yoto and, for me, switching out the story cards was reminiscent of NES carts. The graphics quality on both systems are about the same.


Dad bought a Cybertruck and so I did a lap to and from Napa in it.

The cyber

As with any Tesla, the Cybertruck has the bells and whistles of an always-on, everything-by-wire electric vehicle. Some examples:

• The infotainment system is the usual Tesla fare with a few more settings for truck stuff (towing, ride height, etc.). Compared to normal cars, it's a superb amount of configurability. And yet...
• ... as far as I could tell, the seat warmers/coolers have low-medium-high-auto settings. There was no obvious 'off' for the front seats and since we managed to find it for the rears I'm inclined to believe Tesla only wants you ass to be hot, cold, or frequently oscillating to meet the climate setting. I didn't dive deep enough to see if other configurables were similarly limiting.
• I haven't even paired my phone with my truck so most of Tesla's electronic features aren't a check in the good or the bad column for me. The needle moves toward 'bad' when the vehicle's integration with the rest of my life becomes obligatory. Perhaps you can use valet key permanently but the cameras are still rolling - when the infotainment system comes out of sleep it shows a banner saying, in short, "We respect your privacy".
• The physical knobs vs touchscreen debate is well-trodden so I won't re-trod it.

The aesthetics

Source.

Some love the low-poly design. Some hate it. For me, it looks great from some angles and atrocious from others. The fender flare shape is probably the least-bad solution for transitioning between hard edges and round tires. To its credit (and the chagrin of pedestrians), the Cybertruck is the first production vehicle to look remotely like the concept model.

The design aesthetic means hard edges are everywhere, inside and out, except the stuff passengers could headbutt in a collision. The triangular side mirrors are silly, the rear-view mirror is tiny - both probably only exist for regulatory compliance. A Tesla person would say that the rear camera display is all you need. The rear display is big, wide, and pans when you signal for a lane change. That said, the rear view picture is too fuzzy to distinguish, say, an Altima from a Crown Vic beyond a carlength or two. Perhaps a future software update will use object recognition to highlight law enforcement because it might be useful on a vehicle with the Cybertruck's power, stability, and je ne sais quoi that screams "ticket me!".

The drive

The truck drives more or less the same as the Model 3 we rented sans the noisy, leaky weather stripping. For a 6,800lb vehicle, it's quick and responsive and overall pleasant to drive. I did notice a constant, almost-imperciptible jerking left and right on the steering wheel, I'm not sure what that was.

I liked the small, Roadblasters-like steering wheel and its 10:00/2:00 grips were useful when turning. The wheel has a few physical buttons, I mostly used the one that activates the gigawiper because the truck's droplet detection was too aggressive for intermittent sprinkles.

The truckness

Because it's big and electric, there's tons of room in the CT's cabin. Everything in the interior looks and feels solid but I didn't do any destructive testing.

I told my dad he needed to keep his Nissan pickup to do actual projects since the CT is a glorified minivan. He was adamant it functions fully as a thing that can haul lumber and gravel and stuff. Given the vehicle's price point alone I'd be shy about doing any serious work with it but then again, after the PPP dropped all of the pool guys in my area started hauling chlorine in F150 Raptors.

Whether or not the Cybertruck is a good handyman vehicle, the motorized tonneau, cargo gate, and electrical outlets make it good for recreational truck stuff like tailgating, toting surfboards, and car camping.


It's entirely on me to have ordered from B&H late in the game. That said, they offered free overnight shipping and had the package to FedEx a day early. When Christmas Eve rolled around, I made sure someone was there during the three-hour delivery window so it was inconvenient and surprising to see a "sorry we missed you" email later that afternoon. The shipment tracking site showed me a door tag that was very much not the destination door.

It was only a little unsurprising that the package was not delivered on time. The phony door tag photo, on the other hand, irked me and made me concerned that the package would be delivered somewhere else on the 26th. Two kids in Ted's caucophonic living room confused FedEx's automated call support so it put me through to human customer service. I informed the representative of my concerns and his response was, "The driver lost his mind, but don't worry, the package will be delivered to the correct address another day."


GBES went (back) to Battlemage for the December event, then meandered over to Booze Brothers for some couch conversation and awesome smashburgers.

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