Travel Swellness: Living on the Edge with Ford Canada

September 24, 2015

How can it be fall already? I’m still catching up on summer blog posts, oopsie. Like back in June (June!), I spent the afternoon with Ford Canada learning about the Ford Edge crossover vehicle and also doing a bit of “living on the edge” — more on that in a bit.

The Ford Edge has a number of cool features I discovered that day. I can’t talk to you about horsepower (and I doubt you expect me to!), but how about the nifty tiny jetwasher that keeps the camera clean? Whenever I’ve driven a Ford, having that rearview camera help me with parking, and now the view is not only kept clean with this jetwasher, but the camera technology is such that it allows you to see around corners (viewing things that you just seated in the driver’s seat can’t!). For example, way before you spot a pedestrian walking past behind your car, you’ll view them on the screen.

And parking has never been my forte (friends can attest to that…) and I’m a huge fan of active park assist. Now it’s been enhanced. Some features of enhanced park assist: There are now sensors that help you with perpendicular parking and as for parallel parking, the feature now helps you with parallel parking on either the left or right side of the road.

And a feature I’m fond of (as is a friend of mine who also drove a Ford with me recently: blind-spot information system. There are radar modules on the vehicle and when a vehicle is in your blind spot area, a small light in the corresponding rearview mirror blinks on.

My fourth favourite feature: the lane-keeping system. A camera in the car monitors your driving compares to the lines on the road that define the lane. If the camera detects movement that indicates you may be drowsy, the car alerts you and recommends you take a break.

Having the experience of driving with these features in the  Ford Edge allowed me to drive and live on the edge, as they framed it, but all safely. And it’s all about safe driving now, isn’t it?

To top off the day, we literally got to live on the edge by taking part in the CN Tower EdgeWalk. If you’re not familiar with it, it involves being harnessed basically at the top of the CN Tower, walking around the Tower, while also completing a number of poses. I don’t particularly have a fear of heights and based on photos I’d seen of the EdgeWalk, I’ve always thought the experience looked a bit lame.

LET ME TELL YOU I WAS OH SO WRONG.

So the actual walk around the Tower is a bit boring as I’d expected, and I found  most of the poses quite easy to complete. Leaning at a 45-degree angle with the harness holding you securely? No problem; all I had to do was stare straight out towards the horizon. But one pose had me shaking with fear and I just barely completed it. This was when we were to step to the edge of the platform and have our toes extended over the edge of the platform. For me, the reason this had me shaking like an 8.0 magnitude earthquake is because having to extend your toes over the platform meant I was forced to look down…down alllllllllllll the way to the cement streets and sidewalks of downtown Toronto. I can feel my heart beating faster just typing about the experience. I failed on my first try (stepping back quickly) but the second try I forced myself to get the very tippy toes of my shoes over the edge for the quickest moment, before stepping back to stand solidly on the platform.

It was the exhilarating way to cap off the day (a day in which I even drove in rush-hour Toronto traffic, which in and o f itself is its own adventure, haha, through various neighbourhoods I don’t usually get to, so it was a bit like being a tourist in my own city). Thank you,  Ford Canada, for the adrenaline rush!

 

Filed under: Travel Swellness

Tags: Active Park Assist, adventure, CN Tower, drive, driving, edgewalk, ford edge, sightseeing, Toronto