Just finished a 3 wk cross country trip in my 11 IE. Nice thing about driving is you can see a lot of your friends and relatives in one whack, bad thing is all the traffic. "Bertha" now has almost 40K with this trip under her belt, and she performed flawlessly. Some highlights from the trip: Montana backroads are fun!!! Did some hiking in Glacier and drove 464 out of Browning back and forth two times. Beautiful back country road that Bertha could cruise between 80-120, almost no traffic and the rolling vistas were incredible, those drives made the trip worth it in itself.
You really get to know a car when driving it this much in a short amount of time. Reflecting back, I came upon a few revelations; Bertha is a fast tank, not so quick, but sure is fast, semis are bulls, big and slow, but extremely dangerous, engineers made this a highway car, not dishing the quarter mile club, but this car was not designed with that intention, ability to slalom saved my #ss when I passed a semi and instantly swerved to miss a massive truck tire in the middle of the road, speed is nice to get rid of tag alongs and get out of clumps, 3rd (manual tx) goes to 90 and 4th to 120, knew this along time ago, but these two gears came in handy for aggressive passing, she is 3 cars in one, depending on rpm (2,4 and 5-6K), stayed cool driving hard at 100+ degF, head temps rose only with a/c on driving in 5-6K rpms up hills, slept in back with seats down and legs in truck (I'm 6'3) at rest stop, also slept with seat reclined ok, lots of cops giving tickets, only sped during daylight with good visibility and low traffic, slowed when approaching hills and turns (this is where the traps are), cemented barrier portions of the highways are not patrolled due to accessibility, saw a nice mercedes get shoved of the road when boxed in by some semis, don't mess when passing semis, extremely dangerous, take back highways whenever time permits, takes longer but less semis, sometimes its best to slow down and let the clumps and tag alongs go ahead and speed up when congestion clears, usually catch back up to the "group" and pass them later anyway, TOO MANY PEOPLE!! as observed by semi traffic, wasn't this bad a decade ago, Interstates need another lane just for semis, US infrastructure outdated, Bertha LOVES to coast down hills and after high speed runs, always kept high speed runs lest than a minute or two:grin.
Last, use risk management always, but everyone should do something like this as a bucket list item, ill never forget it!!! :grin2:[/SIZE]
You really get to know a car when driving it this much in a short amount of time. Reflecting back, I came upon a few revelations; Bertha is a fast tank, not so quick, but sure is fast, semis are bulls, big and slow, but extremely dangerous, engineers made this a highway car, not dishing the quarter mile club, but this car was not designed with that intention, ability to slalom saved my #ss when I passed a semi and instantly swerved to miss a massive truck tire in the middle of the road, speed is nice to get rid of tag alongs and get out of clumps, 3rd (manual tx) goes to 90 and 4th to 120, knew this along time ago, but these two gears came in handy for aggressive passing, she is 3 cars in one, depending on rpm (2,4 and 5-6K), stayed cool driving hard at 100+ degF, head temps rose only with a/c on driving in 5-6K rpms up hills, slept in back with seats down and legs in truck (I'm 6'3) at rest stop, also slept with seat reclined ok, lots of cops giving tickets, only sped during daylight with good visibility and low traffic, slowed when approaching hills and turns (this is where the traps are), cemented barrier portions of the highways are not patrolled due to accessibility, saw a nice mercedes get shoved of the road when boxed in by some semis, don't mess when passing semis, extremely dangerous, take back highways whenever time permits, takes longer but less semis, sometimes its best to slow down and let the clumps and tag alongs go ahead and speed up when congestion clears, usually catch back up to the "group" and pass them later anyway, TOO MANY PEOPLE!! as observed by semi traffic, wasn't this bad a decade ago, Interstates need another lane just for semis, US infrastructure outdated, Bertha LOVES to coast down hills and after high speed runs, always kept high speed runs lest than a minute or two:grin.
Last, use risk management always, but everyone should do something like this as a bucket list item, ill never forget it!!! :grin2:[/SIZE]