When I lived in St. Louis 30 years ago, there was a guy at our church who was something of a character. He was a nice enough guy with a delightful family, but to be honest, his elevator didn’t quite go to the top, or if it did, it took a long time to get there.
One time several folks from church were helping him with a remodeling project at his home, and they found themselves a few 2×4 studs short. To expedite the work, they sent him to the local home store to pick up what they needed to finish up. The guy owned a small car, and was worried about how he was going to get several 8′ boards home, but they told him not to worry, just roll down a window and let them stick out.
Now, you and I would roll down the front passenger window, slide the 2×4′s in diagonally, and drive home. I’ve done it several times, and you probably have also. This guy, however, rolled both back windows down, slid the boards in crossways with several feet sticking out both sides and proceeded to drive home down the relatively narrow streets of the St. Louis suburb where they lived. I guess he was causing quite a disruption in traffic, because he eventually got pulled over and the cops made him call somebody with a bigger vehicle to come after those studs before they would let him go.
I’ve felt like that guy every time I had to haul the tandem on the back of the Jeep.
The thing just stuck out so far that I wasn’t comfortable at all driving around town with it. On the highway it wasn’t as bad unless you got into road construction (which we’ve had a lot of), but to be honest it was always kind of scary.
We could have bought a Draftmaster, which would have eliminated the width issue, but they are pricey, as well as big, heavy, and cumbersome to move on and off the vehicle and would have taken up a lot of garage space.
We actually came by that Jeep under rather unfortunate circumstances, and while it was fun to drive at times, in the long run, it wasn’t the kind of vehicle that was practical for our lifestyle. To that end, we made the decision to get rid of it and buy a new tandem hauler:
The bike is too long to allow the tailgate to be raised on any of the compact sized trucks. It was that way on the Chevrolet Colorado I owned before, but on that truck the tailgate could be raised to a 45 degree angle, and actually held the fork-mounted bike pretty darn solid. The tailgate on this truck doesn’t come up to a 45 degree position like the last one did, so I’ll probably end up strapping the back of the bike down for any significant journeys we make with it.
Pam was pleased that I chose the red one so it would match the bike…..
God bless…
TW
