Sunday, June 28, 2009

Day One - Middle Tennessee to Oklahoma City

DAY ONE:

This was a very heavy travel day. After taking care of boarding my pets (Millie the Basset Hound and Max the cat); I headed out of Tennessee hitting the road at about 7:45 AM headed for near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (Norman, Oklahoma to be specific).

The trip took 10 hours 14 minutes of driving time and covered 728.8 miles although the total travel time was close to 12 hours. Average MPG was 24.9 at an overall average speed of 71.0 MPH. According to my in-car gauge; ambient temps were as high as 103 degrees although I'm not sure what the official high for the day was…as engine oil temps have been a concern for the 370Z I'm happy to report that even in slow-moving traffic due to construction, etc…oil temps never went much above 230 and even under periods of sometimes hard acceleration; it didn't have a problem at all.

On the comfort side, the 370Z is not a bad car to travel in but long distance traveling requires stops every now and then to stretch the legs for a few minutes…the vehicle is pretty comfortable but there are only so many (and not quite enough) sitting positions! Overall all it was a pretty unremarkable day…almost perfect, if very hot, weather.

I took the car to a local car was after I had checked in at my hotel and a couple of notable things happened. First, a young mother came up to me just after I had pulled into the wash bay and asked if she could use my cell phone…seems her 3 year old who was belted into his car seat had managed to lock the car with him and the keys inside…she called her mother to bring a set of keys so she could open the vehicle…it was a Toyota SUV so no "On-Star"! Since the car was running and the A/C on, the little boy was comfortable until Grandma arrived.

The second thing is that gentlemen showed up to wash a beautiful and completely original black 1965 Oldsmobile 442. He's the original owner and the car was nearly perfect. We talked for a while and I found out he also owns a 350Z which he's heavily modified. Of course, we also ended up talking about the 370 and some of the differences between the 350 and the 370!

The other thing that caught my ere was there a "self-service dog wash" attached to the car wash…I knew such things existed (and there has been time when I've taken my hound to the dog park to play that I wished I had one available to me before putting her back into the car) but this was the first one I had ever actually seen and this one was busy!

Tomorrow it's on to Amarillo where I'll actually pick up Route 66!

First Day Pictures

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