Reporting From the Mother Road!

Robert_Nash

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 Murfreesboro, Tennessee hitting the road at about 7:45AM headed for near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (Norman, Ok to be specific).

For those interested in such things, 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 (in general, I tend to travel about 10 MPH more than the posted limit except in heavy traffic/urban areas where I usually keep closer to the speed limit). 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 if only to get out and walk for a few minutes…the vehicle is pretty comfortable but there are only so many ways you can stretch your legs!

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 Olds 442. He’s the original owner and has kept it absolutely perfect. We talked for a while and I found out he also owns a 350Z which he’s heavily modified so of course, we ended up talking about 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!

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Robert
-My Basset Hound Is Smarter Than Your Honor Student and Barack Obama -