i have a friend who's curiously never had to do anything but not be as big a headache as his younger brothers and can do it. I don't have a class until march. it's kinda now or never.

we've got a choice of transportation, he's got a cayman his dad got him to blunt the randomness and late-stage leaving of his mother and wrecking his family. may be fun.

after my a5 took a superduty headon, i got one of the new grand cherokee overlands with a hemi which affords us considerably more creature comforts in terms of gps with bluetooth, screens for dvd and ipod video galore, then i had real speakers, dynamat and low-profile amps built in. i came in with the mopar cat. and got an engine block heater and stuff like a cold-air intake and stainless exhaust and muffler so i don't need to replace it. came with skid plates and a snorkel so i just put big wheels, nothing noticable for rims and made sure to put tires geared towards performance with a little water-shedding ability. 300+hp, tiptronic, laser and radar built into the thing(just confuses laser guns)and all sorts of silly safety stuff.

the cayman's fun for the driver and has the same speeding-electronics internally-installed but i'm not sure where we can safely open it up. i'm not interested in fishtailing on icy roads and trying to recover. the jeep drops down at speed, is dynamatted to s-class silence and with the hemi and brembos it's non-plussed in the 100-115 range on average road and the passenger can crash in the back with the ipad or the backseat screens.

he's ending in pasadena and i'm ending in sf but he gets 2 days of skiing and i get a day in moab and a day in durango and either car can do 2 pairs of skiis and a board, but i can do a bike for him and the mojo for slickrock and the v-10 carbon for downhills instead of renting. and i'd rather deal with ski country with 2 kinds of 4wd but i'd get the porsche from socal up to sf and sonoma which is potentially-ill. actually, the last 1/3 of the drive in the cayman's potentially going to have spaces deserted enough to not shift until you're closing in on the rpm's laughably showing red lines.

dunno, cayman's supposed to be so good it's really hurt 911 sales and i can always drive my car, but it's small and a car like that in bumfuck, utah driven how it wants to be is criminal speeding. got one of those already, expensive and best-case is cabs for 6 months.

i don't trust the range rover sport at all to make it 3000 miles sans incident, it stays on the island.

anyone who's done it, did you want more space or the ability to smoke m3's and corvettes for sport and take some of the southwestern mountain passes remembering just what a perfect use of your clutch feels like again?

i'm buying a triumph or base dyna this spring, no jesse james faggotry, just a bike as bikes were meant to be. one or two bmw's have appeal, the on/off-roader and interceptors have potential to just get to the part of maine where the towns and roads turn into areas.

Once. Never again. It was as dumb and useless as I thought. I was 19, and my bf thought it'd be a great idea after we flew to NYC to meet his parents, to bring his car back to the West coast on a cross country drive.

I don't even like driving anywhere past the 3 hr mark. If it comes to that, take a goddamn airplane.

A long time ago. Oakland to NYC, mostly via I-80. Early '90s in a '77 Chevette. Creature comforts? Zero.

Winnebago.

2004 Tenn. > Las Vegas > Laguna Beach and back a different route with my wife and the in-laws. My in-laws were a peach ...my wife ...not so much !

i've flown enough for five lifetimes and i have adhd, it's torture at the 4 hour mark. across the country, virgin's fine, if i'm going 9 hours or more, i'm spending a few extra bucks to maintain some kind of sanity and using BA's curtained-off beds .

have you been on a swissair cattlecar lately? rows in the middle of nowhere with fat guys coughing. i'm ipadding it until i need to pop some seroquel i need to fall alseep flying and drool for the remainder of the flight. booze makes me feel like death on planes. anything but attendants bringing you whatever fluids you desire stat leaves you dessicated as shit and again, feeling awful.

i've never seen most of the country, i'd like to. i've spent enough time on the coasts and texas with some skiing and wilderness mixed in, but i'd like to see what the dakotas are like, what the miss. river's like, etc.

yeah, an rv would be cool as shit for something like that, but we've got two viable cars to do it relatively fast and comfortably when it comes down to it. his getting some skiing in and my tagging along if i can do moab and go back to sedona(was there right after new year's but barely scratched the surface of hiking trails or bike trails) make slickrock and redrock a real possibility. both probably are hard to justify trips to on their own, but moab a second time would be a real treat, as would hitting telluride and jackson for him(he's good enough to care that it's not park city or shit, I'm happy with western snow).\

anyhow, a little more comfort or the best sportscar short of the rs8 and christ knows, maybe close to some serious-assed shit. i've driven the cayman, i'll take it over any bmw m, 911's without the major turbos, and i've never driven a gt-r so i can't compare but the only thing i'd rather drive that distance is a 599 in gto form or a 612 because of the space. the v-10 enzo-derivatives are too fucking demanding to want to drive anything but short and on perfect surfaces. i'd take it over any lambo made, unless i was driving in a straight line and had earplugs in the whole time and suffered from color-blindness. it'd blow any of them away going over mountains, million dollars or not, a gt3 may fall short of the top speed, but it'd end up a day ahead of a veyron or lambo once the elevation started to rise and things got twisty. 599's fast and just handles with the track german stuff, i've taken driving courses and a 458's so light and composite-y for the bhp and way it handles 12 hours would make me want 4-point belts and a helmet because redlines around 9k and a comfortable settling in point of 179 is just scary. schuey made that car for himself, it was supposed to replace the non-12 cars but it ended up embarassingly faster than the enzos and f50's. the f40's still considered the one car you can buy that an f1 driver would need serious time with before being able to push, it's supposed to do 240ish, in the hands of a pro it's been clocked faster than mclaren's, veyron's, etc.

ferrari's new top dog team driver supposedly had it over 265, and this is a car from the late fucking 80's.just a beast, so much carbon before carbon and supercars mixed, 4-pointers, race seats, and nothing like a stereo, digital gauges, etc. just a lightweight shell, sickeningly-longthrow clutch and wasn't even geared to do 0-60, it started shining after 150-70. just a brutishly amazing car.

but yeah, i'll take a cayman over an aston for the rockies.

I've done all kinds of cross country driving. In the late 90's, I took a BMW from Anchorage, Alaska to Seattle, then to New York, down to Florida, back across to California, and back up to Seattle. I would never take a car that small on a roadtrip again. If you're in the driver's seat of a small car for more than 5-6 hours, expect a giant knot to form in the upper right part of your back. Bring a larger car than a Cayman. And get one of those refigerated coolers that you can plug into a cigarette lighter.

Living in Alaska, I felt I had to drive around the country to see it a little bit. Yellowstone, Chicago, New York, the blue ridge mountains, Monticello, the swamps of Louisiana, Carslbad cavern, the Grand Canyon, driving through the desert in a sports car were all highlights for me. I got pulled over speeding through Yellowstone and the woman ranger who pulled me over must have talked to me for about 20 minutes about roadtrips. She wrote me a ticket which I originally thought was for 800 dollars, but on closer inspection, the 8 was a $, so it was a ticket for $00. Awesome.

Be prepared to develop a strong hatred for minivan drivers. The will ride your bumper endlessly when you're in the left lane. As soon as you pull over to let them pass, they freeze up, jiggle the steering wheel and then floor it to pass you. Then they slow down to 5 mph slower than you had originally been driving. Happened to me at least 50 times.

My personal record for the most amount of miles driven in the shortest period of time was driving from Seattle to Anchorage in 36 hours flat. That's around 2,500 miles. In a pickup truck. And we had to stop to get a tire replaced. I did it with a friend of mine, and we still can't figure out how we made it from Seattle at midnight Friday night to Anchorage at noon on Sunday. We were popping no-doze and downing diet coke the whole way. My friend flipped out at one point claming he saw a pack of bears. When we turned back to check it out, it was a couple of ponies on the side of the road. We did get to see some bison though.

I'll agree with your comments about the Cayman being a great car. The only problem is, once you're over a certain height a mid-engine sports car is pretty much out of the question. The seats only go back so far. I'm 6'5" and it's just too small for me. At the end of '09, I bought what is basically the perfect sports car for me. 911 Carrera 4S Cabriolet with PDK transmission. 385h.p. with all wheel drive, and launch control. Drives like a snow machine in the winter and you can put the top down all day during the summer. And, thanks to to shitty economy, I bought it for $30k under sticker without having to do any real haggling.

both of our dad's are in the mix, his dad actually was going to let us use the car i've always found stylistically faultless and i asked if he's keeping it much longer given it's rwd and he's driving to jay peak every weekend.

the previous gen-cls series is gorgeous, he's actually thinking about trading it in soon and i'm glad i asked. it's just a work of art, just a silver arc. the sport's too much to trade, maybe i'll sell that for an fj cruiser and the remainder should get me it. or i can just give him a check and worry about things later, he's looking at an x6 for a ski-mobile to compliment the 5-xdrive the ex-wife's got.

i'd hate to rwd it to their place in vt in snow at night, it's a lot of dodgy logging to backroads. anyhow, i fucking want the cls, they stopped making the attractive ones in 2006 and they're a bitch to find and i'm wary buying used.
basically it's like an e/s-hybrid with 2 doors, a nice big engine, quiet as fuck and the one he's got has to be gov'd at 155 which of course was the first thing a porsche fanatic has altered. if it did under 180 it would be a shock. so 35k is what he was going to get as a trade, i paid more for a damn jeep than something that's fit for moma.

yeah, a sedan with 507 under the hood and 4.3 and 6.2 german liters with amg suspension and brakes along with enough size for a 6 foot three guy and lots of crap with all the airbags and speed-sensitive power steering, 7-speeds on the wheel and blindspot, dozing alarm, etc. will get one there confortably and quickly.

the porsche is for the summer. actually his dad's vs. my dad's red car thing is the fun part.

Fuck Audi & Mercedes for now. BMW fixed their looks and people are going to flock back to them. I just replaced my A6 with a new 535xi and couldn't be happier. Also, I want to be on whatever drugs you are on. I feel you are having a separate conversation with 2-3 other imaginary people.

i just got wrecked in an a5 this sept
i've always loved the amg cls coupe

i respect the m's but the looks aren't the same as the first cls. i'd buy an audi rs-x for m6 money

but there's nothing quite like the fucking howl coming out of the maranello plant, when all's said and done. gto. 1962. just sick. daytona, bern.boxer, testarossa, f40, enzo and the latest and greatest street legal italia and 599's. even the "sedate" familyish 612 doesn't do a good job of hiding the 12 over 80 when you're paddle shifting within their rpm ranges twice what an a5 sets them at. 200 for a 4-seater that weighs something's just not much of a disguise. the 430 shooting blue flames from the tailpipes accelerating on the highway as it zips by a m5 or 997gt2 is sick, the 458 not even having a real top speed's sicker. those 2 are measured in laps not 1/4 miles, only gt3's can hang with them on good days. the faster 2 599's on a grand prix course would shame any supercar you can buy right now, the pure juice and gto-history of design is straightline fast then leaves a lambo or mclaren looking at red looking more and more like a distant dot as the curves come along.

the ferrari version of the fast bentley or big amg still has the manettino on the wheel, no bentley driver should touch it. oh, and f1 shifting speed that ended up in enzo-range through 6 gears.2 plus 2 at 200 plus with the driver changing up suspension, huge ceramic discs for brakes, apache helicopter displays by flicking a button, and a classic front-mounted 12 with real cargo space and comfort.

go to italy, they'll set it up for your family's height, weight, etc. otherwise everyone gets bucket seats with aeron-chair ergonomics and the ability to change the tint and color of their windsheild pane to suit their mood. oh yeah, it'll smoke a gallardo while the kids listen to peter and the wolf.

i've been in 550's and they're sluggish and cramped compared to the scag. the 430's a different beast, especially as it turned into the 458-no 12, carbon fiber everywhere, it's a fucking f-1 car. the paddle shifters are faster than the enzo, and the 58's a hundred times faster than the 30, it's just 0 to 100 for the sake of the tires then a weird whoosh then you're tossed back and you're so low and things are so fast in less than five secs you're doing 180 and coming out of a turn at 200. engine braking in a carbon car is unreal fast, then by 5th you're 190ish.

shit's tight, that's the only way i can describe it.

the 599gto can do .2 faster in a lap but not in a f1 driver's hands.

but it's a beast, just a beast. supercar meets a true gto car, hasn't happened since sixtytwo and those went for ten million and up a car. expect serious drivers to push them over 220 on wider tracks.

This thread is a wall of text for me right this minute. (See time of post) But I did read the first three or so posts and can see that you are equipped and financed for such a trip.

From Boston I don't know how you would route it but I highly recommend this venture and that you get yourself to the old Route 66 asap from your start point. I may have missed the post where you said you were going to give the vehicles away on the west coast but if you intend to return then you should take a northern route west then a Southern route home, or vice versa.

I've done the cross country drive as far as Window Rock, AZ and enjoyed it but our purpose then was to knock down miles to get from point A to point B. It would have been much more fun to do what you propose. To my traveling party's consternation even then, I'd whip it off on a random exit to see the worlds largest ball of string or whatever and I highly recommend you not schedule yourself too tightly.

And, those Cayans are sick quick. I loved the one I drove. But the woman opted for the egg's older brother I posted a picture of a while back.

Edit: I saw Porsche and Cayman above and thought you were talking about a Porsche Cayenne, which we test-drove. Then I proceeded to misspell it. FML... I am intoxicated.

Freightliner.

i'd cut down through az only to hit sedona, i've fallen somewhat in love with the red rocks, the sonoran desert has a few hours of novelty then it's up to ski country.\

the new suv from porsche is legit finally not being a vw with a different badge. not that much faster than the britmobile, but the overland's fast enough but can tow, winch itself, handle streams and i can deflate/inflate the tires and it's got extra clearance and 20" wheels with thick tires that roll on roads, but drop the psi and they're great on sand. slime during the deflation=requisite. didn't want to drop real range rover money and the 4runner's gotten too big. if i could have found a land cruiser 80-series with decent miles i would have jumped all over it, but i could get a better engine, quiet cabin and creature comforts for 85% of what an fj could do and the difference between anything else in the size's engine and the hemi 5.7 with the mopar shit installed pumping out around 350 and more in torque is a real difference. like low 6's getting onto highways, towing a few small sailboats, throwing kayaks or bikes in the back and gunning it to the vineyard with no wind resistance.

the lexus rx350's a crossover, the only cars i'd choose over the overland would be a range rover on lease or the land bruiser new, both of which are pricey. the LR4 drove like garbage, and you could add all sorts of off-road toys, active safety shite, and aftermarket stuff to then overland to hit the land rover $ but then you'd have a quieter, faster, truck with 2 sets of tires, a huge rack of lights for when you want, and high-output xenons and fogs, all sorts of stuff for descending at weird angles, and a wet storage area that's invisible from the trunk for a space blanket, flare gun, and if you're in the boonies and geeked out, more offensive firepower than 2 soldiers in hostile areas carry on a mission w/out eotech shit on top, swap 10x50's, gen 2, and fixed 10x schmidt and a few feral dogs or coyotes and some lighting up what's about to be 7.62x51 nato sniper rounds but semi-auto with a nikko nighteater lets you get some sleep fast. if 120 rounds with a buddy holding a light doesn't turn filas and peros into the taco bell meat they're fit for as dogs, they'd better be a nuisance if they're getting .338lapmaged. i just hate the sound of strange dogs when i'm kinda in the middle of nowhere and stray mexican dogs left dead are a benefit to all. not like they're bothering me with closed windows, but the next guy may be in a wrangler.

i digress, i thought i was done with cars that didn't have ballast behind them but the cls is a personal lust object and i'm old enough it's not silly to own a used one. i never use the back doors anyhow.

Sportsmobile clicky.

Seriously, 4x4 van conversions custom to your specs, diesel available. Crawl rocks, fly down the highway, have every creature comfort.

186 and the amg tricks in a big coupe seem to be the way to see cornfields and indiana for hours vs. days. dvd and ipad through the thing and a 10mm and 1911 and a decent sbag and comforter w/featherbeds are a good way to get rest when it's cold, tents and bivy in the trunk beat bedbugs, and tweakers in the woods hate fabrique national's chick-unfriendly classic and a ar-ten in the trunk and they'll quiet down filas and mexi-dogs gone feral fast with a spotlight. and when city's appear time to find a w, shower and eat real food and feed chicks working bar for tuition booze until she regrets something,

I've made several road-trips, when I was in the US.
From Porterville, CA, (between Bakersfield and Fresno) to Las Vegas and back. That was only 6 hrs or something, so it doesn't really count, I guess.
Another was from Porterville, CA, to New Orleans, non-stop. Mostly driving on Interstate 10. It was exhausting, but I saw a lot of beautiful landscapes.
Then back from New Orleans, via Kingman, AZ, to LAX.

Last one was from Indianapolis to Tunica, MS.

For sheer motivation and inspiration, Brock Yates' book about the Harris-Baker rally is a must. Forget that silly Burt Reynolds, Dom Deloise movie and think about the editor of Car and Driver teaming up with Dan Gurney one year after Gurney retired from racing, driving a borrowed 465gtb from Manhattan to Redondo Beach in 38 hours (including stops for speeding tickets) and you'll get the idea. The race was run 5 times and the fastest ever time was just under 35 hours, which at 88mph seems reasonable, until you try it. Gurney was was quoted saying they never exceeded 175 on any public roads (which Yates backs up 'cause he swears they were only doing 174 along highway 10 outside of Phoenix in the predawn light as they tried to avoid jack rabbits). If you can read this book and not try some speed stunt then put a bullet in your head, you are already dead. I live one exit south of the San Francisco airport on 101 and after reading this I drove from home to the El Tajon rest stop at the north start of the grapevine pass on I5 in 3 hours flat. Not advisable but fuck was that fun (I think I let my speed drop to 87 on the curvy parts of Pacheco pass but made up for it doing 115-120 once I hit I5) and by some crazy luck I managed to avoid getting caught doing this on a Saturday morning.

I won’t drive if I can fly. But if I was going to I’d want the car my family would take cross country. A seventy model Ford LTD. Not only was there ample space for everybody and everything, it was about the safest thing on four wheels. Today you could use it to cut through most anything with less than eighteen wheels.

If you’re flying internationally of course business class and above are best, but if you can’t, sit towards the back of the plane, you’ll usually have fewer filled seats, besides there is a nice rocking motion you get with the wide bodies which facilitates sleep. Also drinking helps, not so much you want to punch a fellow passenger, but enough to make it easier to nod off for long periods. Cathay Pacific, Korean Air, All Nippon Air, and Malaysian Air have the best service. Air France and British Airways have better service than American or United, but that’s not saying much.

Do it, why the hell not? I was in Durango over the New Year's, skiing at DMR. You do NOT want to be up there without 4WD, period. Snow chains, maybe, but on my drive out there was a snow pack on the road until almost back to 4 Corners, about 90 miles.

i have an iranian friend gone wrong from college whose family traveled through tehran in a procession of bmw 7's with the "protection" package. too heavy to act carlike and drivers were required, but 2 minutes of a plastic-explosive sweep looking for dets starting at the car-bomb level and sweeping out 50 yards or the limits of the roads.

but what's w1 without a flotilla of armored cars and genuine anger that post-9/11 they ruled that helicopters were no longer rooftop accents in sw1/w1. the consuls were the worst, but putin's apt to kill them without rapid air transit if they're of an accent that bothers him when he's got a headache.

suitcase full of enriched nukes coming up, the fools can't fly in all that wealth.

my a5 was about as fast as they make them without waiting for an s-badge. a ford f350 made me rethink light cars entirely. the wonder of the bitter divorcee's cls with silly power is that all sorts of alarms yell at me when mexican-hiring contractors and trailers approach and the gas is essentially fucking afterburners when pressed in anger.

some ged prick sees a flash of silver and a loud amg-12 and understands what a sea-harrier buzzing him must be like, i'll add the cannons, asmissiles and a shitload or rocket pods.

i'll take a harrier or a-10(preferably) to chase down armor and as mick told me to paint it black like smoldering hulks of metal look when they're faced with a viking range set up by putin, shit's well-done to a different understanding of it. some mig-25's are still one of the airstrikes i'd call in-f-15's that like to fly low and carry a few armored personell carriers between them in shit for creating explosions and naught an eardrum intact. fast as fuck getting to the fuck shit up coordinates, then turn hard and a few sonic booms later they're just some white trails in places ethereal.

i didn't click any of charins links and maybe he already tried to go here but rapevan would seem an appropriate choice given the forum.

rapevanwinckle?

we stayed at a place called enchantment like 9-10 miles down dry creek road. you're 20 minutes from town, you're not seeing anyone but guests without interest in being seen. but they get props for tossing axl. my folks had been there a bunch and wanted to rape the az market so they were being shown houses right around there. the views warrant a second floor and tons of glass, that area's zoned in the middle of parks so it'll never get overbuilt. for what a buildable lot in chilmark goes for sotheby's is selling off 3000-4000sq feet with little warmed places to put water and chlorine in basically a glass room. same thing was 4ish in 06, they've got a second bit of land on mv that sister and i can't take years dealing with getting done.we just bought for dock access, freshwater pond and tennis courts then ripped all carpeting out because mildew's on steroids there. a green dishwasher from the 70's is fine and the road's private as well as a noise complaint for a drunk renter causing shame to the owmer and a desperate apology it had happened a week ago too, their only recourse from d.c. is screwing the money and having the police evict that day. dick, but i have enough issues sleeping to hear people repeating the same inane shit while slurring it more each time. it'd suck to wake up with a hangover and be told by cops you're allowed until 2pm to be out of the premises then the association's keys are theirs and the parking spaces are on a private road and they're towing them at the same time. chinese fire drill, pack and get your car out in 2 hours or lose your shit and island towing's twice what a real tow costs. ass, meet dick for not shutting up.

Nothing better than a bunch of dead yuppies spread across the Tarmac. Be safe jasem.

Hey bishop, what year was the 928?

1979... That car drank more gas than any other that I ever owned. Not helped by the fact I rarely drove it below 100 mph..