People often find it hard to believe that I parallel park my full-size truck downtown, when I drive downtown. While I don’t go for mini-spaces (I generally need a space and half to fit my truck), I am fairly good at parallel parking my truck in the city.

I’ve worked downtown for many years, and parked various cars and trucks downtown. The reality if you drive downtown, you often have to parallel park if you want to park for free, or even park at all anywhere near your destination. Practice makes perfect with parallel parking.

I don’t really like my inability to see backwards or the car behind me when parallel parking, but as long as the spot your pulling in is longer then your vehicle — I always check before starting by pulling aside the spot — and you get your angles right, it’s not too bad.

Still, I do not enjoy parking my big truck in the city, or for that matter driving in the city. I’ve only driven into the city, on average once a month since January. It’s just a pain constantly watching the angles, checking the sides, and all the mirrors. I try to avoid driving in the city to the greatest extent possible and doing parking where there are other cars around. I much rather enjoy driving on open roads in the backcountry.