Great 2007 Auto Trip Data

Those who have been around for awhile know that Grumpy likes to brag about the performance of his Red Rocket, so if you are bored by statistics, just skip this post. But if you really want to know what a good car can do in the hands of a skilled (make that old & experienced) driver, then listen up!

We filled the fuel tank to the very top as we left home on June 30th. Grumpy was not always so careful to fill it as full on subsequent refueling stops -- in particular, the fuel stop we made in Ontario OR lacked about 3 gallons of being a complete fill-up as the automatic shut-off on the fuel nozzle is highly respected by the lackeys who have to gas up your car in Oregon. In sympathy with them, Grumpy has to admit that it takes an inordinate amount of time to fill the Red Rocket tank "up-to-the-neck" point. Even Grumpy doesn't do this except when he wants to get an accurate measurement of the amount of fuel used between certain odometer readings, which he was careful to do at the beginning and near the end of this trip.

So, Grumpy topped off the tank to the very top of the filler pipe as we left town on the 30th of June and again when he filled up in Wenatchee (150 miles from home) on the 17th of July. In between those dates, the Grand Mother and Grumpy travelled 5,092 miles, consuming 157.457 gallons of unleaded regular gasoline, for an overall mileage of 32.34 miles per gallon. The "official" EPA rating for this model is 28mpg for highway miles (and that's probably at a cruise speed of 55 or 60), so Grumpy feels pretty good about being able to beat this number by a sizable amount. Grumpy won't say what his "normal" speed was, but suffice it to say that the Grand Mother was "not comfortable" some of the time. But some of the time on nice straight freeways, she was asleep! But she was wide awake at one point where I hit my maximum speed -- I think I was passing some trucks or something like that. At any rate, no traffic tickets were collected on the entire trip and a happy conversation was enjoyed most of the time.

Altogether, from start to finish, we drove 5, 245 miles in 19 days. We had reservations for motels at all planned overnight stops. Except we didn't plan where we would stop in a few places (North Dakota, western Nebraska, Utah and Oregon). We satisfied these accommodations by calling from the cell phone during the mid-morning of the day we were to arrive.

Grumpy grossly underestimated the amount of pavement he could stuff under the wheels and keep within the Grand Mother's tolerance for time sitting in one place, hence the first days, with stops across Montana, ended fairly early in the afternoon (even in the late morning when we pulled into Livingstone MT!). The steely nerve of the Grand Mother impressed Grumpy so that next year when we take this journey again, we will plan to stretch the miles between overnights a little and eliminate a day or two going and coming. That will leave us more time to spend visiting or seeing sights, which is what this sort of trip is aimed at in the first place.

Now, after a few days' rest and taking care of home obligations, the Grand Mother and Grumpy are taking a Delta 757 jet back to Maryland to see the four Great-Grand kids that she has not seen. (Grumpy has been fortunate enough to have flown with Uncle Bob to visit them a year ago.) We will celebrate son Harry's and Grumpy's birthdays while we are there.

The Delta 757 on which we will be flying is equipped with the all-electronic propulsion control system that was the highlight of Grumpy's career at Boeing. He was involved in the development of this system from initial concept trade studies, through prototype testing and finally to introduction on the 757. Grumpy rode in the flight test airplane (circa 1985) but this will be the first time he has ridden on a commercial flight in one. He is pretty excited about it all, especially considering he is not fully into his second childhood.