I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. When Ford Canada reached out saying that they wanted to loan me a 2013 Ford Flex for the week the first thoughts that came to my mind were "I already own a vehicle, why would I borrow one? And how does this fit into our editorial concerning Awesome stuff in Vancouver?". Moments later, as I sat scratching my head in a corner of our sometimes-cluttered office, my thoughts (and my eyes) landed right on top of the table that I haven't been able to move to my home In the Village on False Creek because my car is too small. I'd been meaning to borrow a truck from a friend for weeks so that I could transport this thing home and put it into our crafts room where it would then be graced with a sewing machine and an assortment craftmaking tools, so I took Ford up on their offer with the intention of certainly showcasing the truck but essentially serving my own interests and getting this damned thing out of the V.I.A. office. My self-serving decision would actually end up helping some underprivileged kids later in the week - honestly - but we'll get to that in a future post. First: the truck!
Here it is parked outside of our Chinatown office, before I loaded the table into the back.
As I mentioned in some tweets I made about it during the week, I spent some time in the last 7 days trying to figure out who was smarter; Bob or the Flex. I am not GPS equipped nor do I connect via Bluetooth to my iPhone, and I certainly don't have two USB and SD Card ports as well as a fridge in my backseat. I do not have keyless entry nor do I start by the simple push of a button. I don't make a beeping sound and flash a red light on the windshield when cars in front of me stop abruptly and cause a hazard. However I am voice activated (like it is) and I do know how to park myself (just like it does), so I can boast to be nearly as smart as this thing.
But enough about the vehicle, I assume you're just dying to hear about the thrilling, 8 block adventure that my table went on from Chinatown to the Village. I turned on the GPS just for fun, and because I like the way Science World looks on it.
And since this vehicle is quite big, I played the only track on my iPhone that has Notorious B.I.G. track on it; one off the newest Diddy album (yes, I have guilty pleasures and I am not afraid to flaunt them).
Here's the table in the Flex!
And here's an animation of it magically unloading itself! The vehicle is pretty advanced technologically speaking, but self-unloading tables is one of the few things it doesn't do. This is all movie magic you're seeing below.
And that's it. Easy peasy.
In a day or two I'm going to share a less tongue-in-cheek piece about how we used this vehicle to help some kids. Stay tuned!
