My First H3 "Like Nothing Else" Experience

[silverbrick]

Thursday (6/30) was the first time that I used the H3 to commute to work. I did the usual routine of parking at the Greenbelt, MD (Washington DC suburb) subway station parking lot and rode the train to DC. Well my trouble or adventure started on the way out the parking lot on my way home. The parking lot toll booths are unmanned, and have these card readers that are just the right height for a person driving a “normal” vehicle to roll the driver side window down and press his/her “SmartTrip” card against the reader. Then the exit barrier would then be raised so that one can exit the parking lot. Well, I pulled up to the toll booth, stopped beside the card reader and rolled the vehicle window down. With the smarttrip card in my left hand, I tried to press it against the reader. No way. I needed like 6 more inches of left arm to get to the reader. I unbuckled the seat belt, then tried doing it half standing and leaning out of the window (...and yes, I did put the A/T in P before I stand up). No way again. Being the Hummer guy I am (48 hours of experience at the time), I decided to open the driver side door to get to the reader. No dice. The door was hitting against the booth, so I couldn’t get out. I finally gathered my wits and maneuvered across to the right front passenger door, exited, ran around to the left side of the H3, pressed my card against the reader, hustled back into the vehicle and took off. By the way, I am 6 feet 2 inches tall...and the 2003 Chevy Trailblazer I used to own was a “normal” vehicle.

It was strange that the people that were in the cars behind were not yelling at me, which is not normal. They were preoccupied with looking at the H3.

The moral of this story is that if you are going to act goofy, do it in an H3, so that the attention will be away from you.