![\"fox](\"https:\/\/c7.staticflickr.com\/1\/392\/31647594486_c26877cd7d_m.jpg\")
Petty annoyance: the gym\u00a0patron who sits on the equipment with his yap hanging open while watching Fox News. Do your damn reps and move on, please, others are waiting. I was all set to loudly remind him to wipe down the bench of the leg press when he finally got off, but he whipped a rag\u00a0out of his pocket and did it before I could embarrass him. Small blessings.<\/p>\n
Since the election, the wall monitors at my local Anytime Fitness\u00a0are set to Fox News. It’s like North Korea, where there’s just the one channel. Usually there are other patrons watching Fox as\u00a0they work out, so I know better than to track down\u00a0the remote and turn the monitors off, which is what I do on the rare occasions I have the place to myself.<\/p>\n
I try to ignore the TVs at the gym, but today the volume was up and I couldn’t help overhearing the hosts and their guests. In the hour and twenty minutes I was there, all they did was hammer away at\u00a0Democrats and Hillary voters for being whiny crybabies. Trump won, get over it. And so on. I wonder why leg press guy’s mouth was hanging open. Surely this isn’t the first time he’s heard that message.<\/p>\n
He was probably the owner of the pickup truck crookedly backed into the parking slot out front. Which is my way of changing the subject to the eternal debate over backing in versus pulling in.<\/p>\n
![\"crooked](\"https:\/\/c5.staticflickr.com\/1\/710\/30842590724_57b82cf3e6_m.jpg\")
We\u00a0used to have a pickup, a long-bed ’94 Ford F150, but it had a remarkably tight turning radius for a truck and I always pulled into parking slots nose first. When I\u00a0saw other pickup\u00a0drivers backing in, I’d judge them.<\/p>\n
Since backer-inners were usually\u00a0young men, I assumed\u00a0they were showing off, as young men do. Backing in is\u00a0positioning yourself for a quick getaway later, right? Maybe these guys pictured\u00a0themselves as rugged types, like gunslingers\u00a0who always sit facing the door in case Rattlesnake Pete\u00a0comes into the saloon. Maybe they wanted to be seen as\u00a0rogue tactical operators, Jason Bournes who might have to sprint\u00a0for their trucks\u00a0at a moment’s notice, CIA goons on their tail.<\/p>\n
Last year I bought another long pickup, a 2014 GMC with an extended cab. The new beast doesn’t turn as tightly as the old beast, and now I know why\u00a0other men back their trucks into parking slots. It’s not because they’re poseurs, it’s because it works better.<\/p>\n
When you nose in you need a couple of feet either side of the front fenders, because as\u00a0you crank the steering wheel the nose arcs to the left and\u00a0right. The pivot point is way behind you, back at the rear wheels. If other cars are in the slots to either side, you can’t help coming within inches as you try to maneuver into the slot. Usually there’s not enough room get straight the first try; you have to reverse and swing the nose around before you’re aligned well enough to pull in. If there\u00a0isn’t enough room to back way up\u00a0(as there often\u00a0isn’t) you may never get straightened out. You wind up parked crooked, making it hard on the folks parked next to you.<\/p>\n
When you back in, the rear of the truck doesn’t need side room. The rear wheels are the pivot; it’s the front end arcing from\u00a0side to side out in the aisle of the parking lot where there’s room to do it, and it’s easier to align yourself with the parking slot. It just works better.<\/p>\n
All of which is to explain why I have become\u00a0a backer-inner. If other drivers judge me, fine, I understand. To others\u00a0it’ll always look like a poseur move.<\/p>\n
Boy, that “others” packs a punch, doesn’t it? Others as in drivers of smaller, inferior cars, the piddly-ass kind that nose into parking spaces like little fraidy cats. Others as in girly-men. Others as in “not me.” Notice I said I no longer pass judgment on backer-inners. I didn’t say I\u00a0no longer judge!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since the election, the wall monitors at my local Anytime Fitness are set to Fox News. It’s like North Korea, where there’s just the one channel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,2,414,1],"tags":[68,2209,2208],"class_list":["post-19761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-personal","category-tv","category-uncategorized","tag-fox-news","tag-manliness","tag-parking"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19761"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19776,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19761\/revisions\/19776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}