A couple of trips, a few thoughts on the Ford F-150, and a gripe about Lyft.


We spent the last days of the xmas holiday visiting family in Austin. It wasn't the best time to travel, the Southwest terminal was standing room only. Still, we found a table at the restaurant and had some particularly exciting roller bag rides around the terminal as we waited for our delayed flight. In Southwest-speak our flight wasn't delayed but, rather, "the depature time changed".

We got into AUS around eleven local then drove out to to the Bee Cave area, home to many of the California transplants. Branching off the 71 highway are a bunch of tract developments with large square-footage, postage stamp estates.


Jamie planned a couple of brunches for us, Laundrette on Saturday and June's on Sunday. They were super tasty and had the Austin vibe.

After Laundrette we roamed around the Lady Bird botanical gardens. It was pleasant, particularly because of the 70-degree weather, warm breeze, and thick, high cloud layer. There was even a kids area with stuff to climb, a garden maze, and a rock grotto.


I'm not much of a plant enthusiast and so the fact that the gardens primarily showcased Texas's forty eight dozen varieties of nearly-identical oak trees made the experience less about the flora and more about the walk. It's probably also worth mentioning that most of the placarded trees were planted relatively recently.


I personally enjoyed the part of the walk that traversed natural areas of the park. To be entirely honest, I always pictured Texas terrain to be similar to the Inland Empire - dusty, rocky, inhospitable. It isn't. The rolling hills, sparse trees, and low grass are nice under tall, dark clouds.

The Borrego area which isn't too different from the IE.

Of course, part of what makes the IE inhospitable is the three-digit temperatures and inescapable sun. I certainly would not enjoy the Texan wilderness in the heat and humidity of summer. And like the ticks and rattlers of SoCal, Texas has scorpions and fire ants.

Ultimately, I'd take the redwoods over North Mexico any day but this trip helped me understand more when Texans talk about appreciating the state's 'natural beauty'.

The most cursory of comparisons of preserved land in CA and TX - certainly the visitation is more indicative than the number of parks. The BLM difference is quite substantial.

There's also the question of how easy it is to enjoy the Texan wilderness. I frequently see commentary about the lack of public land where the responses aren't "we have lots of public land" but rather "just ask a ranch owner to use his land".


After Lady Bird we stopped by the Jester King brewery beer ranch. I'm normally shy about anything remotely associated with clowns, but in this case it worked out.

The brewery sits on a large pasture with a playground, outdoor stage, and barn thing with tables and a stage. When we arrived there was a big kids v grownups football game and shortly after an Irish/country band set up inside.


The tap list was excellent, it included a couple of serious stouts and a Japanese(-style) lager.

Last month I talked Cybertruck, this month I'm going to talk F-150. Why? Because I'm on a three hour flight and the kid has my earbuds.

I rented an F-150 on this trip because, as they say where I'm from, "when in Rome". Being a rental, the F-150 I used to make the 30-minute trek between Austin and the burbs was the cheapest of the model's three dozen levels of trim. So I came in with low expectations, though it's worth mentioning that I was and would have been plenty-satisfied with a fully-manual 2001 Tacoma with 150,000 miles - it's entirely possible to design a base model truck that isn't a piece of absolute garbage.

My 40,000 mile rental F-150 was a piece of absolute garbage. It was immediately hard to enjoy on account of smelling strongly of cigarettes. This isn't Ford's fault, of course, but rather that of the non-discount rental company named after a fort I can never seem to remember. So let's skip how it smells and dive in to how it drives.

How it drives

An automatic transmission vehicle has three primary inputs and so in my mind it makes sense to focus on these. To its credit, the F-150 steering wheel did its job. It turned right, it turned left, and it did so without an inordinate amount of play. 4/5.

Input number two, the brake pedal, wasn't quite so solid. Sometimes brake sensitivity takes getting used to. In the case of my F-150, it oscillated between wet sponge and hair trigger without any obvious environmental differences. But the brakes did work every time I pressed the pedal, so we'll give them a middling 3/5.

Coming in dead last was the third primary input: the accelerator (and automatic transmission). It was simply impossible to know how much pressure was required at any time to affect an intended change in velocity. 1/5 and I should say that I know Ford can do better because Derrick's mid-tier F-150 accelerates just fine.

"We're behind the automation curve"

I drive a manual normally so sometimes when I'm parking an automatic I kill the engine while still in Drive, particularly when the selector is on the tree and it's midnight after six hours of travel. And so I was a little impressed and a little horrified to see that when I removed the key from the rental F-150, a little motor kicked in and moved the selector from Drive to Park.

The F-150 wants to do other stuff for you. There is an under-dash switch to engage the parking brake with no clear indicator if anything happens when you flip it the opposite way. The switch may be completely extraneous because, as I found in the process of a three-point turn in which I selected Park instead of Reverse, putting the vehicle in park slowly engages the parking brake. I found this thoughtful feature to be undesirable when (mis-)executing a three-point turn.

I didn't do a full inventory of invasive or unnecessary automation on the truck, but damn did that thing love reminding me of shit when I turned it off - mainly that I should check the rear seat for my daughter.

Other important design considerations

The small, gray box next to the speedo is telling you your truck is "Built Ford Tough".

The F-150s gauges played the "Built Ford Tough" animation on startup, proving that even after cutting cable, truck commercials are inescapable. On the subject of gauges, they were angled for best viewing by eyes positioned mid-thorax for a person of my ordinary height. The speedo and Ford gif weren't difficult to read (unless the wheel was rotated) but it was strange that the panel was not aimed at the headrest. Is it better for glare? Are the seats normally lower? Are the majority of F-150 drivers short kings?

Final thoughts

I was not fond of my rental F-150, even compared to the usual Avis and Hertz shitboxes. I did appreciate that the truck has one feature geared toward motoring enthusiasts - there's a stick shaker (well, wheel shaker) that activates when you hit an apex. It's not the kind of sporty feature I would expect from a vehicle that has the design aesthetic of a cinder block, but I suppose minimizing lateral g-forces is equally applicable to performance driving and hauling heavy loads. It wasn't perfect - it also activated when changing lanes - but new, disruptive features always require testing and tuning.


I had a day back in SD before shipping out to the WMA. The snow/state of emergency part of the polar vortex had passed but it was still pretty chilly with a biting wind.

I should have known better than to book anything but an 8am return flight - despite how much that wakeup call sucks. Our 1pm flight departed around 4 and into a headwind characterized thusly:


It wasn't all bad, I used the time to knock out a global entry walkup interview and, of course, a Wreck. We booked kind of late and didn't have a seat assignment but ended up with a middle seat in econ+. I took the opportunity to finally see Alien Romulus which was, like Fury Road, a perfectly-executed film in a genre I love.

Time to uninstall Lyft?

Lyft apparently now requires that your device collect all the surrounding radio data to function as a taxi app.


The non-travel days have been nice as well.


Dani was tossing her suction cup ball at the window and asked me to give it a throw. Being a dad, I tossed it to the top of the window. She was impressed by the placement and, without disappointment or hesitation, grabbed the longest retrieval instrument she could find. It happened to be an unwieldy stuffed wolf named Wolfy.

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