[V8] V8 trip over the weekend

[Roger Woodbury]

Sadly we had to go to Ottawa for the funeral of a dear friend over the
weekend.  We left Ellsworth, Maine on Saturday morning in the V8 following
the mapped route up through Sugarloaf, crossing the border at Coburn Gore.
The Canadian Border Guard asked us about our travel route and he took one
look at my MSN Maps route and said: "That's all wrong".  He gave us a
photocopied map that took us the "correct" way through Sherbrooke to
Montreal.  Very smooth basically, and light traffic through the beautiful
Canadian farm country.

 

We got back last night around midnight.  The trip was around 900 V8 miles,
and the car was perfect.  The perfect instrument for a trip like that
including two lane, mountain, flat plain and Interstate or divided highway
touring.  We averaged around 22 miles per gallon overall.

 

My wife is continually impressed when we travel in the V8.  It is obvious to
her that there is no effort involved for the car to do whatever it needs to
do, whenever it needs to do it.  The big challenge is that the car will
cheerfully float along in triple digits, and there is very little difference
in sensation between seventy and a hundred and twenty miles per hour.  Since
I haven't fixed the cruise control yet, I had to be exceedingly careful as I
didn't want to have a roadside meeting with the Quebec Department of Surete!

 

Of course, my V8 was built twenty years ago. Now there are many cars in
which such a trip could be done, more quietly, and probably more
economically with the same relative level of comfort. 

 

However, my V8 cost $5400 last year and the enjoyment per dollar sure does
smack the daylights out of investment that that one guy in the CLK who
checked the V8 over four times on the autoroute had.

 

Roger

 

P.S.  I really need to get that barn built so I can find another low mileage
V8 to put in the V8 Bank..