[V8] Road Trip: V8 triumps again!

[Roger M. Woodbury]

We just celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary by taking a trip to
Massachusetts to revisit some of our old haunts from high school, and to
attend a BSO concert.  The V8 covered the 700 miles of travel with typical
grace and aplomb belying its near antique status.  

 

It's been a long time since my wife had seen some of  the buildings she
built in the Andover area, and an even longer time since she had seen Natick
High where we first met.  We rode down by the high school and the site of
the new high school that has just begun.  The old football field has been
spruced up quite a bit, but the bleachers behind which we used to go parking
and neck looked much the same but the entire area is now more of a real high
school sports complex, and the fencing make parking out in back a thing of
the past.

 

But the biggest difference for me especially was the enormous amount of
traffic..far too big, ugly SUV's going entirely too fast, careeing along by
yuppie females, cell phone glued to their ears.  Boston was easier to
navigate than Route 27 through Cochituate and Sudbury.  Framingham seemed
mostly like a mess.

 

Heading out of Boston we pointed the car up Route I-93 to I-95 for the run
back up the Maine coast.  I saw not one single V8 in the entire trip, and
only one A8 leaving Boston.  BMW's are small change, and there were a few
Audi A4's.  I saw one Panamera in a parking lot in Wayland, and the usual
handful of "lose your license" red Carreras being driven by insecure looking
early forty something males.  

 

But by far the most interesting car we saw on the entire trip was the brand
new Aston Martin couple on Interstate 95 near Amesbury.  How yummy that car
looks in person.

 

While we traveled along we decided to start to make a list of the ugliest
cars being produced and which American drivers seem to snap up with no
regard to the damage that such ugly monstrosities deal to their vision and
that of their neighbors.  I'll eventually finish the list and write about
it..the 20 ugliest cars being produced, or some such title.  Even the now
departed Hummer looks better than some of the ugly plugs.

 

I am expecting at any point that some one, perhaps thirty years younger than
us, will slam on the brakes of his new A3 and want to know WHICH new Audi
ours is.  I am sure there are many out there who have no idea what these
cars are.

 

Roger

 

On the trip:  Average fuel mileage overall:  23.6

On the return: I didn't take an overall average speed, but we stayed in
traffic and made no attempt to "lead the pack".  When the Interstate traffic
was moving, it varied from sixty to eighty, and I saw eighty-five for a
while several times.  In Massachusetts the traffic density kept speeds down
in the forties and fifties and below, even on the Interstates.  The V8 is a
great car for two to take such trips.  But we are amazed that people can
live and drive in such traffic and over such small, narrow roads day in and
day out and live to tell of it.  

 

We lived through the experience and escaped back to Maine.