New Truck

My new truck has a hands free feature that can play iPods and MP3s by voice command. On our drive home from Ralph's house Sara was reading the owner's manual and she plugged in her iPod to my dashboard. The next thing I know Sara is yelling at my dashboard to play certain songs and I told her to a: Stop yelling and b: That's not how it works. Then all of a sudden my dashboard started talking back to Sara and asks her which Johnny Cash songs she wants to play. What the? A talking dashboard? The dashboard displayed the song and artist that was playing. You can tell the "Dashboard" (Powered by Microsoft) by album or artist what you want to hear. The iPod is disabled while plugged into the car so that you don't fiddle with the iPod and crash. You have to use voice commands or controls on your steering wheel. This feature almost had the opposite effect on me because when the dashboard started talking I almost swerved into the ditch from the surprise! It can also do hands-free stuff with my phone.

The big boys (Luke and Grant) were good the whole way too, 2 hours each way. They were playing their new Nintendo DS Lites. They did not see any of the Texas country side the whole way, but they didn't whine about the long drive either. On the way back Sara showed Luke how to reach new levels on the Zelda game, a family bonding moment. Yes Sara plays it at night and uses the internet to research solutions to sticking points in the game, Luke thinks she is a "Pinball Wizard".

My last truck just and a V-8 engine and a bed...boring!